January
by Armchair Elvis
Summary: House is sick. Set before the Pilot. Strong HouseWilson friendship, HouseCuddy friendship. Please R&R. Chapter 5 up, sorry it took so long. FINISHED.
1. Chapter 1

This was originally started on the House Fans board ( s3 dot invisionfree dot com slash HouseFans ), in the WIP forum. It's mostly edited/fiddled with now, so updates should be fairly quick.

**Summary: **I'm bad at these. House gets sick. Set before the Pilot episode. A lot of dreams. That wasn't meant to sound cheesy. NO character deaths or deathly illnesses. Fairly angsty. Strong HouseWilson friendship, HouseCuddy friendship, sort of. No slash.

**Feedback: **Yes please. Especially if you have comments on the plot/lack thereof, but even if it's just a great recipe for lasagne that you found, because everyone likes lasagne.

**Thanks: **Go to people on the House fans board for help and comments, especially some American language stuff. You know who you are.

* * *

JANUARY.

ONE

_The boy disappeared, Johnny fell on his knees,_

_started crashing his head against the locker,_

_started crashing his head against the locker,_

_started laughing hysterically _

_When suddenly Johnny gets the feeling he's being surrounded by_

_horses, horses, horses, horses _

_coming in in all directions_

_white shining silver studs with their nose in flames,_

_He saw horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses._

– Horses, Patti Smith.

* * *

It was that empty, hungover, snowblind time between Christmas and the New Year. Christmas was over, but the decorations were still hanging on storefronts and telegraph poles. There were people around, but they seemed happy to listen complacently to fake jazzy muzak tunes in grocery stores while they bought aspirin and discount eggnog and milk. The movies were crowded, full of guffawing teenagers and bristling with sharp elbows and knees, the bars full of sad drunks, still smelling of christmas purges and stale cigarettes.

He couldn't leave, he couldn't stay.

He left the apartment in a hurry, making a split second decision, which are easy to make if you're bored, only taking enough time to pull on a pair of shoes, grab his wallet and keys and go to the toilet. Quickly.

Half his mind wondering what he was doing, lagging behind like a small child, dragging it's feet. The light indoor door thudded behind him. He didn't bother to check the lock when he heard the dull metallic click of the latch behind him. His shoes squeaked on the polished wooden floor in the corridor.

As he stepped carefully down the icy steps he could still hear Patti Smith playing inside his apartment, asking him _Couldn't he show her nothing but surrender?_ He'd show her.

He picked up a Sundae at the drive-through at Mcdonalds, and as he was driving out through the exit ramp he put his foot down, just scraping through before the set of lights a block up turned red. He sped up. At the next set of lights he ran straight through.

Soon he was rat-racing with teenagers in their doof-doof cars, swerving around a bus full of sleepy-eyed Japanese tourists. He sped towards the highway, onto the ramp, and then he was just another lump of speeding metal, alongside family sedans with sleeping children in the back, and wide-eyed truck drivers chewing gum, hundreds of other people driving places, windows cracked slightly to let cigarette smoke out, hands banging tensely on steering wheels.

He turned the radio to a teenage heavy metal station, and when the angry song that was playing ended he realized his teeth were gritted against the growing pain in his leg. He shifted position, put his foot down slightly and slipped a Deep Purple tape into the player, an old tape that had been kicking around numerous cars of his for as long as he could remember, a tape that had miraculously survived milkshake dregs and kicking feet and parking lots on hot days for God knew how long.

He drove for a long time, and when his leg began to stiffen, he looked for a rest area along the highway that wasn't filled with old people in Winnebagos or teenagers making out.

He slowed the car down, pulled off the highway onto a gravel rest area, a small park containing only a picnic table, a tap and a small area of grass, a slightly spooky children's swing set. There was a huge billboard just up the road, proclaiming that it was only twenty minutes until the next KFC. As he pulled off the road a huge semi-trailer passed by with a roar and a rush of air, a faint smell of oil and burnt rubber.

He opened the door, and suddenly realized just how stiff he was, with the cold, with driving, with trembling. The silence was odd after the music and the rush of the car on the highway.

He could feel the cold against his face and his ears. He stepped out of the car, just managing to not fall forward onto his hands. He hurt, so he leaned against the car for a minute, feeling the snow under his feet, watching his breath fog in the air, listening to the cars rush by, whoosh, whoosh, tick tick whoosh, over and over. The air was so fresh it hurt his teeth.

He was alone. All he could hear was the tick of the engine, the crunch of the ground, the remote highway noise. He staggered out into the middle of the frosty gravel area, crystallized with broken glass over in one corner.

He yelled. Just yelled. When he was done yelling he just stood there for as long as he could. Now all he could hear was his own breath, his throat clearing thin against the air. He yawned and thought that he was tired now, his shoulders were slumping, his toes were numb. He chafed his hands together and went back to his car. He was aching, feeling pleasantly tired. He turned home, and it was almost tomorrow.

* * *

Dr Gregory House, MD, a physician (Certified diagnostician, internal medicine) with a double specialty (infectious diseases and nephrology), a theory on bedside manner that could fit on a post-it note, a collection of vinyl records that would be the envy of every teenage kid on the block if it was 1978 (or '88, or '43), a Duncan Super Tournament Top Yoyo and an odd talent for completely wrecking beds, woke at 4 AM from a dream-filled sleep (none worth any mention) to find that he was cold.

He'd thrown off all of the bed covers save the sheet, which was futilely bunched up around his torso. He was naked, and as he lay there he realized that he was shivering, muscles trembling, protesting. Despite of this he lay still, procrastinating in only the way that you can when you wake up in the middle of the night. After about five minutes (he reckoned, times at night are always reliative, and it was really really cold) he leaned awkwardly over the side of the bed and grabbed at the bedspread, pulling it over himself as his leg began to register pain at a higher note.

After about ten minutes he had realized that there would be no more sleep tonight, not here, not now. His leg hurt. He needed to pee (as you always do when you wake up in the middle of the night, he mused). He sat on the edge of the bed to catch his breath and gather his thoughts, before launching himself up and stumbling to the bathroom.

An alright night's sleep, until he woke up. Story of my life, he thought.

The bathroom light was dazzling, the fluorescent tube flashing twice before emitting a steady light. The floor cold against his bare feet. He trembled and his stomach griped with the cold, with early-morning sick hunger. Goosebumps crawled on his legs, sending a different shiver up his spine and down his right thigh.

He grabbed the covers off the bed and walked through the apartment, silent except for far-away city-night noises. He wrapped himself in the quilt and stood at the window as the light changed and the occasional early-morning traffic passed by. He didn't think much, just let his mind wander wherever and enjoy having the morning to himself, this cold snowy pre-dawn, the grey frosty sidewalk under an island of sodium light.

After a very long time (again, he neglected to look at his watch, and night-times are always mysterious) he lay on the couch, humming tunelessly and flipping through a book, idly, practiced at doing nothing, waiting patiently for sleep, hoping to doze again before the morning was properly under way. And he did.

* * *

Late in December Dr James Wilson, MD, had become acquainted with a Personal Assistant (not his own, nor anyone's at the hospital, but a professional none the less) by the name of Julie. By early April their engagement would be announced. Dr House called Wilson (in one of his less derogatory moments) a hopeless romantic. Sometimes House just assumed he hated to be single, although he knew that the James Wilson School of Relationships was a lot more complicated than that.

As for his friend Greg, a man who at first impression (and House's first impression on people was undoubtedly harsh) seemed to have a life completely devoid of normal social interactions…

Greg was still 'on the rebound' from a particularly nasty breakup, nasty as in complicated, nasty as in Wilson had spent a lot of time on the couch at House's place, nasty as in House had spent more than one night semi-conscious on the bathroom floor. 'On the rebound', because Wilson had always thought that a breakup couldn't be healed without the salve of another involvement. Another relationship.

* * *

Early in January, just after New Years, just before the slight cold he'd been nursing for quite some time would take a turn towards worsening rapidly, in part due to his steadfast refusal that he was not sick, (because pneumonia just wasn't any fun), House was walking quickly towards Wilson's office on a Monday afternoon, hoping to avoid Cuddy, because she had been hounding him about getting some staff, as per the usual, (because this was a teaching hospital) and actually healing people, (because the only thing he had diagnosed in the last ten days had been the TV in the Nephro lounge).

He hoped to coax a free early ride home out of Wilson, planning tell him that he was paying entirely too much attention to the dying people, why didn't they both mosey on over to his place for TV, pizza and beer? He'd just picked up a DVD box set of Lethal Weapon on the cheap on Ebay, and he was looking forward to an afternoon of fake explosions and slapstick action sequences.

He walked towards Wilson's office, and saw through the door that he was talking in the phone, staring intently at the cord, which he was worrying back and forth in his fingers.

House slowed down. He could just be talking to a patient, but… he always walked around when he had one of those difficult calls, and this looked personal.

He couldn't tell much of what he was saying. _I don't know…. Him…when… Big_

He addressed whoever he was talking to, and House leaned forward for a moment, brows furrowed, mouth slightly open, his tongue flicking unconsciously over and around the capped chip on one of his front teeth.

Stacy. Oh, God.

It could be a million other people called Stacy but House knew who it was. It was _his_ Stacy. Well, she had been. He felt something hot grab at his chest, some early emotion bubble through his head, and for a second he thought he might storm into Wilson's office and throw his cane down on the desk.

He didn't, though. He tried not to look like he'd just been slapped in the face, and looked on. He was closer, and he saw Wilson clearly say _I don't know_ and _when is it?_ He looked at his diary.

_Shit. It was something big_.

House could either stop dead in the hallway and wait for Wilson or some other sniveling Oncology doctor to see him eavesdropping, or he could walk on quicker. He strode into Wilson's office, seeing him look up in surprise, ask… Stacy… if they could talk it over later, hang up without giving away who he was talking to. Even if House hadn't known who he was talking to, his obvious secrecy would have given something away.

He only lightly ribbed Wilson when he seemed flustered, some anonymous excuse falling off his tongue, his ears red. Wilson said he would meet him out the front in twenty minutes, he-had-to-leave-now-goodbye, and almost pushed him out of his office. Wilson set off in the direction of Cuddy's office, and House slowly walked outside. Thinking about Wilson, thinking about his protective instinct that went past friendship. Trying not to think about Stacy.

* * *

Wilson ran into Cuddy as she came out of her office. He looked flustered, fiddling nervously with the doorknob to the office, asking if they could discuss something. He walked alongside her, discussing clinic figures and Oncology's schedule until they were in a momentarily quiet corner of the stairwell going up to the first floor. When he said her name, and grabbed her arm softly, she looked into his eyes, thinking that something must be wrong. She thought of House immediately, and in a way, she wasn't wrong.

Wilson took a breath, and said "Stacy's engaged".

* * *

Wilson looked at Cuddy, watched her eyes drop momentarily to the floor, watched her shrug her shoulders, saying that she didn't know what to do either.

She looked at him, her face saying _'It's your call, big boy'_.

So Wilson had a lot to think about, too, and their Lethal Weapon marathon ended early, petering out halfway through the first movie when they grew bored, conversation scant, the explosions not funny, no jokes being cracked, very little pizza consumed. Wilson didn't notice that House wasn't talking much either.

By about 11:30, on a cold Monday morning in early January, Wilson had decided that he was having a real bastard of a day.

He woke in the morning and it was cold, and he really didn't want to get out of bed. He did though, rising stiffly and promptly kicking the little toe on his right foot (the little bent one that seemed to only exist for the purpose of kicking and growing odd toenails) so hard on the edge of the closet that it brought tears to his eyes. He stumbled, undressed and cursing, into the kitchen to discover that all of the Milo that was left in the bottom of the tin had congealed. He hated the taste of plain milk.

He eventually made it to work (picking something unhealthy up at the drive-through on the way, something that he would pay for undoubtedly) but managed to spill coffee down the front of his clean white shirt (hastily ironed) as he almost ran in, mentally cursing those impossible plastic coffeecup lids, ten minutes late for his first appointment.

So, when at 11:30, tired, wearing a dirty shirt, and feeling like his eyes were hanging out of his head from reading tests and charts for the last two hours, he finally wondered why House hadn't turned up in his office or called him yet, he assumed that he wasn't at work that day.

Shit. He remembered. He had wanted to tell House today, sit him down at lunch, in the cafeteria, explain and joke and placate him, until he understood, and he was sure that House wasn't about to do something stupid. Not let him lurch away from the table until he was sure that he wasn't about to knock something over or make a scene.

House and Stacy had a lot in common, one of these things a tendency to drop bombshells on people and shelter from the fallout. She had left Wilson to pick out the shrapnel, pick up the pieces, and he didn't like that. He liked Stacy. He just didn't like what she had done to House.

That was ok, though, because sometimes he didn't like House, but when he saw occasionally how awkward he was, how hard it would be for him to actually become involved with someone else when he had the dating skills of a ten-year old, he was angry, even though he knew it was complicated and he was just reacting in his own protective way. He hadn't slept well last night, but he hadn't called even though he knew that House was probably awake as well. He'd mentioned that he hadn't been sleeping well, in his own fashion, but he hadn't said why.

House had turned up at his doorstep around 10:30 on Friday night, something which wasn't such an uncommon occurrence on it's own. He was altered, as they say. Off his face. High as a kite. Pissed as a newt. Drunk as a skunk. Whatever you called it, he was different. He was... altered. That was the term they would have used had he staggered into an ER, like he was a pair of pants that were too long and needed to be taken up.

House's moods were hard to read, though, and whether this was depression or drunkenness or something else, Wilson didn't know. He seemed drunk. He probably was. House could do drunk well.

James had been watching TV (dozing in front of it, it was Friday night after all), when he heard a sharp knock at his front door, House knocking with his cane.

He had sat up from the couch, rubbing his eyes, to hear the knocking again, louder this time, and House yelling something along the lines of _C'mon, Jimmy, what's keepin' ya!_

Yep. He was pissed, alright.

He had opened the door to find House leaning heavily on his cane and the doorframe, and as soon as he had opened the door he had staggered in, a cloud of bar fumes trailing after him, stale beer and cigarettes.

Before James could question him about why exactly he had visited (more precisely, why exactly he was drunk), House had blurted out:

"Hey Jimmy, guess what? I got Player of the month at Gamebusters!"

Gamebusters. The gaming arcade he belonged to, full of shouting teenagers with their smell of cheap deodorant, and bearded thirty-year olds with Star Trek shirts who probably lived at home with their parents. Raucous jocks always playing the Air Hockey. You paid for cheap stamped metal tokens, which House inserted into machines at a frightening rate. Wilson had often accompanied him there, matching him at Air Hockey (they were both too good for each other, Wilson was an Air Hockey player from way back, he remembered playing at the table in the basement at home with his brothers while Led Zep played from a set of cheesy speakers), and carrying on a tournament that would probably last until one of them managed to break the table, there barring them from it. At this point in time the Score was House 57, Wilson 53. Damn him.

House would stump among the machines, laying down tokens and reserving favourites with his cane. Kids gathered around just out of sarcasm distance and cursed as he leaned to one side and beat their top scores, and once Wilson had caught what they called him behind his back. Cane Man. Cane Man, as in, _hey, dude, Cane Man just creamed your score at Time Crisis! Waste of five bucks, man_.

Wilson guessed that House had finally worked away at shooting little androids on Terminator Two and leaning precariously on one foot while he chucked out combos on Mortal Kombat until he had the high score for December. _Woo Hoo_, he thought, a t-shirt, a free hotdog voucher, and surprise, surprise, more game tokens.

The man really needed another diversion, thought Wilson, although he knew that Greg (the original fiddle, as his mother called him), was not lacking in diversions, especially of the work-avoiding variety.

House turned into the living room like a ship under full sail. He'd evidently had a few, and Wilson wondered what it would take to knock him over. A finger? A few well placed breaths, perhaps? Wilson also wondered about his liver. He wondered how on earth he had got here.

Wilson had asked him what he was doing, House had replied that it was fairly obvious, wasn't it? C'mon, he should come out, there was a good game on at the bar down the road and he still had a couple of drinks to go until he was risking some kind of toxic effect.

Jeez. Of course Wilson hadn't wanted to go out drinking with a drunk medicated friend with limited social skills, and he had said so. House hadn't wanted to take no for an answer. He had prepared some kind of cheesy nachos thing in the microwave, and snatched two beers from the fridge. Wilson snatched House's away, then deposited both back in the fridge. House didn't notice, and after a further argument and a lot of immature baiting, he had had fallen asleep on the couch.

So, when House didn't turn up to work, Wilson assumed that he might have been sulking due to their altercation on Friday. Stranger things had happened.

He had noticed, as House dozed on the couch, that had a cough, the dry, niggling type that is easy to ignore, both if you have it, and if someone you know very well who has been known to inhale smoke and has just been walking around in the cold in new Jersey in the Cold Season has it.

So he thought no more of it, after listening for a second. Just a cough. His cheeks looked red, too, come to think of it, but that was just the cold, his drunken boisterousness.

He had a packet of Hall's cough drops in the pocket of his shirt, cherry flavour. They were mostly gone, meaning that he left a jumble of papers and little wrappers on the couch when he took one out. Just a cough.

When Wilson had woken in the morning House was gone, presumably to nurse his throbbing head and bruised ego.

House had called in sick. He didn't have to ask. Cuddy came and told him, asking if Wilson knew if he had anything urgent on. Funny, she didn't need to ask him that, she was the Dean Of Medicine.

She didn't ask if Wilson knew if he was really sick, but he knew that was really what she had called about. He said he'd drop over after work. She said he could take the afternoon off if he wanted. They looked at each other for a second, and as she turned away Wilson saw a flash of sadness and guilt on her face. He left after his last appointment and twenty minute's paperwork, poking his head into her office on the way. He said he was going to prize House out of his hangover, maybe make him take some Claratine. Laughed, like this was an everyday thing.

_Ha ha ha. I'm off to scrape my best friend off the bathroom floor, what a merry jape_.

He called House, not expecting him to pick up the phone but leaving his standard I'm-coming-over message. "Hi Greg, I'm coming over, put your clothes on!" This was their little answering machine tradition, born when House had called up James drunk one night just as he'd been tucking into a nice dinner with Debbie, his wife (then).

"Take your dick out of your hand and put your clothes back on, Jimmy Boy, I'm coming over!"

* * *

When the doorbell rang, House groaned. He had a headache. His throat was sore. But worse, the dry cough he'd had until a couple of days ago had loosened up and seemed to fill his chest. He had a chest infection, he was sure, and when he coughed it was like he was coughing up razor blades. Swallowing hurt. His chest hurt. His head hurt. His eyes hurt.

He felt hot and listless, his stomach empty and nervous. He was sick. He could feel something rattle in his chest as he breathed, a sound he was used to hearing in dull-eyed feverish kids with drooping eyelids and frantic mothers, not his own chest. He didn't like it.

He lay his head back, took a deep breath and yelled that if it was Wilson, he should let himself in, before dissolving in a paroxysm of coughing.

A thought came to his head, clear and loud. _It will get worse before it gets better_. And another one, whining and weaker. _It's at its zenith. A couple of days and I'll be alright. It's all good._ The same weaker, always weaker voice that had told him they were right, it was just a really bad pulled muscle when the pain had started to be really bad, when the bad voice had whispered in his ear _it's cancer it's spread it's all through your blood and your bones and they're gonna cut off your balls you're gonna chuck your guts up you're gonna die Wilson is going to give you that look it's not ok it's not ok they were wrong your leg still hurts what if it doesn't stop what are you gonna do what if they never find it what if you're the one that they could never work out what happened Oh God do something My Name is Greg and I hurt my leg it hurt it hurts do something for it Greg we're sorry we can't do anything Greg we're sorry we couldn't do anything..._.

He didn't think about that now. He didn't think at all about anything important as he heard Wilson curse and rattle his keys on the other side of the door.

His chest hurt down in the middle, like it had when he was twelve when he'd caught Whooping Cough and was back running at hockey training when he was still coughing so they didn't have to replace his position. He'd run on the field in the morning and his lungs had been nothing but cold hurt, every breath like he wasn't breathing at all, like the air wasn't air but ice and water.

* * *

Wilson used his key to get into House's apartment, the stubborn old lock taking him a full minute to coax to turn. House should replace it, but because he had no trouble getting in the door unless he was drunk, he assumed that it wasn't worth his maintenance time.

Like most household chores, House left them until they were absolutely necessary. Which meant that he would wait until the roof collapsed or the living room was absolutely impenetrable before he had the ceiling fixed or put all of the books back on the bookshelves.

He remembered that once, when House was living with Stacy, she had gone away on some kind of work trip, and House had climbed in to the house by a side window every day for a week because the deadlock had frozen shut.

He stepped into the house, picking up the three days of mail sitting on the mat, which contained what looked like one of his magazine subscriptions. Odd.

House was lying on the couch in front of the TV, which was on mute. He looked like he'd been camped out there for a while, surrounded as he was by tissues and books and vinyl covers and plates and old coffee cups. He looked half-asleep. Odd.

It clicked. Wilson came through the door just in time to see him getting up, just in time to really see him sick for a minute. He smelled Vick's Vaporub and underneath that, a peculiar kind of sick-smell, sweat and sick and tea and Rexona failure.

He was sick.

He was wearing a t-shirt, (the old grey one he'd been wearing on Friday, to Wilson's shock), and an ancient pair of white drawstring pants with holes at the knees.

He was partially curled on his side, and Wilson thought that he must be in a lot of pain, because he was wearing that open-mouthed stunned look like a carnival mask. His eyes were partially closed, but as Wilson walked through the doorway properly he breathed heavily and pushed himself up into a sitting position, his right foot perched on top of the left one lying on its side, his arms supporting his head. He rolled his eyes up, and Wilson saw that they were bloodshot, bagged. Glassy. His forehead was slick. He made getting up look so hard that Wilson felt like sitting down.

Running through his head. Sick. _Hydrocodone suppresses the cough reflex_. Lung infection. Cold. Cough. That cough. God, he was a fool.

He remembered, not so long after House had gotten out of hospital, having one of those serious conversations. He had asked House to tell him, to please tell someone, if he was sick. He had made it very clear that he would never mind being told that House was not well, that it was imperative that House not hide away if something was wrong.

Wilson had felt clingy and not like the man's friend at all, and House had looked at him, probably turned on his blue-eyed sincere look like a light and said of course, but Wilson could tell that he would only ever tell anyone if he damn well pleased and any other time he'd bite his lip until it bled before he told anyone if he was in pain.

Idiot. He was an immature macho fool. Wilson, also, was a fool. He felt like a heel, now.

House and Wilson had gone out on New Years Eve, originally intending to go to a bar and drink, perhaps play a few games of table soccer, but House had had different ideas, once he'd been caught up by the festive spirit, and the huge amount of drunk people cavorting around.

He had, characteristically, become soused after what seemed like only one beer and dragged Wilson around Trenton, rolling about precariously in his old slant-heeled pair of Doc Martens boots, the ice grip on his cane tapping merrily.

Wilson remembered that for one fifteen-minute timeframe they had found everything uproariously funny. He also remembered that by the time that 2002 was about to roll over into 2003 he was just beginning to feel that walking and hearing and seeing at he same time were a little too complicated for his inebriated brain.

They had found their way, in the middle of a huge drunken crowd, to a large grassy park with huge screens broadcasting the balldrop in New York. Twenty seconds after the ball had dropped Wilson had dropped, and as he had heaved in the gutter (still thinking _I think I'm gonna throw up_, not _I am throwing up, I'm throwing up in the gutter like I'm 20_), he had seen House the wrong way around bumming a smoke off a group of high school kids, lighting it with his own lighter. House had eventually taken the kids' advice, (_hey man, is he gonna be ok? Not tomorrow_), and brought his Doc Martens over to just before Wilson's face and helped him up, grunting.

They had trudged back to Wilson's car together, House smoking like a chimney and sniffing like crazy. He had the beginnings of a cold, but he would tell him, right? It was New Years Day and Wilson was drunk, they were both drunk and they could hardly walk. He could drink beer and seem to have a good time, let him smoke, for God's sake, and then it would just be a runny nose and a slight cough in the morning.

He cursed himself as a fool, House as a jerk.

The first thing that Wilson said was Jeez, House, you're sick. Which seemed to him to be an understatement, but he let that slide.

House didn't deny it straight away, but he almost did.

"I know. A couple of days and I'll be alright."

He coughed, and Wilson noticed on the side table next to the couch there was an old stethoscope, probably his first, peeking out from something with music on it. Jeez.

He stepped through to the bathroom, and rooted around in the medicine cabinet for a thermometer, (House only had an old mercury one – typical) only pausing to drop his bag.

* * *

House wanted to get up, maybe to grab something to drink, but before he knew it he was lying back on the couch again, he didn't remember getting up, and he'd been lying there for some time when he felt the cold thermometer in his mouth, Jimmy telling him not to bite and his mother telling him he had a high temperature, he couldn't go to school but he could read his comics, no more going outside with his hair wet.

* * *

James grabbed the thermometer out of House's mouth, just beating his hand as it came up to snatch it out, and he could already tell that the man was running a fever. It was high.

He looked at House for a minute, wondering what to do.

He thought. Seeing him get through it, seeing him cough up blood on the bedroom floor. He didn't want to make a fuss… But he was obviously very sick, anyone could see that.

Cuddy. Maybe.

He'd have to see.

House stirred and coughed, struggling up into a sitting position again.

First things first. He grabbed some of the plates and cups that were lying around, moving into the kitchen.

Wilson helped himself to a glass of juice, made some chicken Cup-A-Soup and toasted some on-the-verge-of-stale bread. The only food House had in the cupboards was the long-life kind, some cereal crumbs in a long-forgotten box, cartons of UHT milk and an ancient jar of olives in the fridge.

He knew House wouldn't have eaten, just as he knew that there would always be a stick book and a packet of cigarettes under the couch. Friends don't need to talk about these things.

While the kettle was boiling House stood up, and Wilson could see that it was an effort.

* * *

House's head swam. He didn't know how long he'd been lying on the couch, but it was a long time, and he really needed to pee. As he walked through to the bathroom one unclouded part of his mind realized that it was really bad.

When he eventually made it to the bathroom he could feel how ragged his breathing was, how much gunk there was in his lungs. He was shaking, and he was so weak that he had to lean on the towel rack heavily with one hand while he yanked at his pants with the other.

His breath caught, and he started coughing, deeper and more powerful than before, so much that he couldn't breathe, he just had to cough and almost gag and now he was kneeling on the cold tiles and everything hurt, and he was spitting something into the toilet bowl. It wasn't healthy looking. He coughed again, so long that first he thought he might throw up, and then he was scared that he might pass out.

He finally managed to get a breath in, and as he leaned his head against the tiles and shuddered he heard Wilson walking rapidly through the apartment through the pain in his head, the throbbing in his ears.

* * *

Wilson heard House coughing in the bathroom, deep. The door was closed, and he hesitated there, hearing a muffled groan. He called out, seeing how easy it would be to open the door if needs be.

"House? Are you dying in there, or what? Can I come in?"

Wait. Beat. Beat. Wilson held his breath, licked his lips.

* * *

House breathed in, felt the cold tiles ache against his legs. Listened to his own heartbeat. Wondered how long it would be, until he would either pass out or come back into himself. He felt hotter.

"Yes."

House made it back to the couch without falling on his face, and that was enough. He saw the look on Wilson's face, a fearful worried one. He was scared, too. Scared of throwing up. Scared of coughing again.

He sank back onto the couch, before thinking that in bed was a better option. In bed he could spread out. He couldn't watch TV, not like this. So that was how it was. He was Like This.

Wilson stood in front of him and said it straight away. They could both see that he was too sick, he needed to go to hospital. House said no, and that he needed some Benadryl Cough. Give it some time.

But even as he croaked that he would be fine, a weaker part of his mind surfaced, whispered in his ear that it wouldn't be long before he caved.

Wilson played the Cuddy card.

"House. I'll call Cuddy!"

"Leave it. I-I…"

House coughed, blinked, rubbed his eyes. Realised that he needed to have a shower and get into bed. Before he couldn't.

It was like he was seeing himself slide back, seeing his head disappearing beneath the undertow.

Call Cuddy… What?

"I'll have a shower. We'll talk about it. Give it some time."

The words were empty, and they hurt his throat.

* * *

Wilson nodded and rubbed his hand along his neck. House got up to have a shower. Wilson wondered what to do, and wondered some more.

Then he thought of Stacy. Fuck.

* * *

House had a long shower. He could smell sick-sweat on his clothes and in his hair, so he soaped and soaked and stood as much as he could, then sat on the edge of the bath and dried. Put new clothes on, a pair of sweatpants and another old t-shirt. Rubbed Vicks on his chest. He was tired, so he sat there a little bit longer, and his eyes were almost cemented shut before he realized that he might not be able to get up.

It was like that dream House had had as a child, where his eyes kept closing of their own accord and he had to stumble around in the dark with strobed flashes of his surroundings.

He got up slowly, so slowly, and limped through to the bedroom, his eyes closed and House asleep on his feet by the time he got to the door. His ears were hot.

* * *

Wilson made sure that nothing would go off in the kitchen, then watched Wheel of Fortune. When he heard the bathroom door open and House's slow, uneven footfalls in the bedroom, (his feet bare and just squeaking on the floorboards), he waited five minutes then walked in.

He was lying in bed, which was not particularly made, but the sheets looked clean.

He took House's temperature (no worse) and listened to his chest.

"Greg."

The shower had made him sleepy, and he took a while to answer. He looked tired, really tired.

"What?"

"You have pneumonia."

House mumbled something, but whatever fight he had in him was fading, leaving his stubbornness and tiredness to fight it out. Tiredness won.

(Once House had told him that sleep was a precious commodity when you can't have it. When you can't lie down and crash out at 10:30 on Friday night like everyone else, it gets to the point when you think that you could happily pimp your own mother in exchange for a night's uninterrupted rest. Wilson had believed him, although he had never had as much trouble sleeping as anyone else).

It had sent him to sleep. It had beaten House and the TV and his hundreds of books and dropped sleep on him.

He left the bedroom. He didn't know whether to laugh or bite his nails until they bled.

Wilson took some food (toast) into the bedroom and laid it on the bedside table beside the now-sleeping House. He had visibly deteriorated this afternoon - so fast that it was scary.

He sat down on the easy chair, next to the piano, which was easily the most comfortable chair in the house, next to the most well-maintained part of his 'décor'.

He didn't want to sit where House had lain sick for the last eight hours or so, not necessarily out of aversion but out of a sort of friendly privacy, and used House's phone to call Cuddy.

Another betrayal. Or, a release, however you wanted to look at it. Wilson no longer cared whether House hated him for doing this or not, just as he had bitten back his flash of guilt and regret he'd felt when he'd had to pull him out of the car once going to PT. He'd felt like a heel when he'd put the TV remote on top of the kitchen cupboards when House was still on crutches, but that was him, the meddling friend. _Meddling friends: they always know better than you do._

When Cuddy arrived, Greg was sleeping. He had begun to shiver, about 30 minutes before, and the last time Wilson had checked on him he had mumbled something, not opening his eyes. After that, Wilson had moved from the TV and put down his bottle of beer from House's fridge and had stood in the bedroom, watching his friend get worse. He was getting harder and harder to wake up, and when he rolled over in his sleep and clutched his leg and said something that wasn't to him, Wilson had felt something cold tug at the bottom of his stomach and had turned away, because he didn't want to see that.

He hadn't wanted to leave him, either, so he had stood in the doorway of House's room and called Cuddy and told her to be there as soon as she could. He thought about calling Stacy. He didn't. Greg would never forgive him. He woke House up, calling him and poking and shaking until he looked at him, and told him that Cuddy was coming.

Well. Forget Stacy. She could wait. House hated weddings anyway.

* * *

_Greg fell asleep, and he dreamed his mother was in the room. At the same time he knew that was stupid, Mum was at home, probably playing bridge with the ladies from church, and he thought, I'm hallucinating. That's bad. He dreamed that he was lying on the floor of the kitchen of the house he spent his teenage years in. The room seemed smaller than he had remembered. Orange light filtered through the window, and his mother was holding the program from his graduation and smiling. He asked her to help him up, but he still felt the lino floor beneath him slick with sweat from his back, and all of a sudden in the back-tingling way of dreams he was seventeen and home and Suzie Philps, the one in his Chem class, was on top of him on the floor in his parent's kitchen the way they'd done it when his parents were at the supermarket, and she was saying he was a weird dickhead, wasn't he. She called him Long and Short, because he was tall and had blue eyes and all the girls thought he was hot, but no one could touch him. Suzie Philps had had him, she was his first, because she didn't care if he only gave her a dog-eared book from his own shelves for her birthday, she just wanted to fuck him. She didn't mind having the boy, (because he was still a boy, he still had to be nagged by his parents to go to bed and to do his hair, he still had band-aid crosses on his knees ), who all the girls said had great looks, pity about his head. His jeans had grass stains at the knees. The cuffs were half an inch too short._

_Suzie Philps had died of a drug overdose in New York in 1983. She had been a painter, the type who gets paid heaps of money to spraypaint stencils on Yuppie's walls._

_But House didn't see that, he was Greg, and she was screaming at him, and he had paint stains on his fingertips from painting an Airfix model (or throwing paint on the sidewalk, he couldn't remember), and an indent from a pencil on the side of his second finger. She was calling his name, and he could smell her hair, and all of a sudden she was slapping him and she was telling him that they had to get up, couldn't he see that they were missing out on something? She flicked a cigarette butt at his thigh and it burnt through his jeans. House screamed in the dream and he couldn't breath and he was underwater and Wilson pulled him up by the front of his shirt. He gasped, and he could feel water dripping off his face like he'd just got out of the shower or inside when it was raining outside. He wished it would rain. He was hot now._

Someone was coming. Right, Cuddy. She was the boss lady, and she had seen him in bed before, but when she had seen him in bed before he had been dead. It was hard to understand, so House just sat up in bed and kept his eyes open and looked.

Wilson told him to swallow, so he did. He had a glass in his hand and some of the glass of water spilled on his shirt, and it was nice and cold. He looked around some more. He looked at Wilson. He looked tired. He wondered how he looked. He felt hot. He felt like the people he sometimes saw sitting on plastic hospital chairs, glaze-eyed and not-here.

* * *

Cuddy hadn't been to House's place much, but she knew how to get there after one wrong turn. The sidewalk was icy and slippery, and it was cold. She turned off the radio (easy listening) and killed the car's engine.

She'd blown off her squash game, and come straight from the office.

Wilson answered the door, his face with that mournful, guilty, I've-done-something-wrong look on it. Cuddy wondered how he was as a teenager, how he'd ever done anything wrong. She saw that he was worried, too, and that a couple of his fingernails had been bitten down to the quick.

Once she had seen him lever up the ring-pull on a can of tuna with a spoon.

She stepped into House's apartment, and Wilson still hadn't said anything other than thanks for coming. He still looked nervous, and Cuddy couldn't help but think that he looked like a teenager showing a girl into his room.

She tried not to look like she was sussing the place out. She realized suddenly that Wilson must spend a lot of time here, and all of a sudden she saw stuff that reminded her of him, his handwriting (or lack thereof, he had a stereotypically messy doctor's hand) on a pile of papers, copies of magazines that she'd seen him reading, Golf Digest, National Geographic.

There were books everywhere. Everything was everywhere, actually, with the coffee table and the kitchen benches looking like his favourite places for dumping everything. Newspapers, books, movies, records, CDs, guitar strings. She saw a bottle of WD-40 standing on top of a crossword, which was presumably not finished because it had a pen sitting on it. A spine-rolled book, passages underlined, pencil scrawls in margins, sat on top of loose sheet music, and Cuddy saw that some of it was written, not printed. He had a cheesy plastic kiddy trophy of a runner sitting on the benchtop leading to the kitchen, holding rubber bands and bread ties and paperclips in its arms.

There were speakers everywhere, and some of them were camouflaged, like it was a game to see how many of them you could spot in a minute. She guessed that he had a system for the TV, one for his stereo system and a portable system elsewhere.

(At PPTH, if the speakers or AV system in your lecture room or conference failed and the nerdy tech people were unresponsive, and if you were brave and presumably had something that was valuable to House, like an offer to cover work, or a bottle of nice booze, or a chocolate bar, he would fix the system, wandering around plugging wires and jiggling connections).

Wilson still had that bug-eyed look, and when she looked on the couch (obviously recently lived-on), he shook his head and jerked it towards the bedroom.

"It's pretty bad."

"Are you gonna tell me how bad?" Something cold and lecherous drew its fingers down Cuddy's backbone.

Wilson just walked into the bedroom. They passed the piano. Cuddy was no judge, but she thought that it was the same as last time, the same expensive classy-looking thing. There were books on top, many concerned with music, and music in the holder. There was a short thick glass, a booze glass, on top, and an ashtray.

* * *

House heard the knock on the door like it was coming from a long way away, but he heard the hurried words and Cuddy's footsteps a little clearer. Cuddy was coming towards his bedroom, still wearing work shoes, and he could hear Wilson coming after her, his stride longer. He coughed and stirred, not knowing why, perhaps preparing himself, but he didn't know why, because it wasn't exactly like he was in any condition to fight or fly.

He tried to think clearly, to think of something to say, but when Cuddy came through the door all he could do was stare at her and try to breathe without coughing.

* * *

Cuddy decided not to think about invading his privacy or anything like that. As far as she was concerned, she wasn't even in his bedroom. She didn't care if he had a mirror on the ceiling or playmates posted up on the wall, or what was more likely, if his bedroom was obviously a lonely single man's, with clothes in the corner and a box of tissues and an ashtray on the bedside table.

She didn't want to see it. She didn't want to pry. She had seen enough of that when she'd pulled down a thin hospital gown and delivered a load of electricity to his heart as he coded, when she'd looked down on the operating table and seen them removing his thigh muscle, seen them going deeper and deeper, and finally draining the wound, seeing the little shake that the surgeon had given her.

The little shake meaning, don't even go there. Cuddy had remembered the muscle poster she'd had on the back of her wardrobe door when she was a child, the red man her uncle had given her._Quadriceps Femoris bends hip and straightens knee. Rectus Femoris... Vasculis Literalis...These muscles make up the great extensor muscle of the leg..._

(She remembered how, at the beginning of the surgery, the surgeon had looked up and given her a look, saying that this was House, what the hell were they doing, What was wrong with this picture, and she had nodded him on. At the end, when it was all done, when they'd taken out all they could, and there was no going back, she'd seen the surgeon take one look at the now dressed and drained wound and look away quickly, like all together it was too bad to look at, because this was House, for Christ's sake, how had it gotten here? In the same way she had jerked her head away when she'd seen a flash of his groin and his privates, feeling like she could never go back from that, never un-see it, because she had looked at him as he lay there comatose).

So, all she saw when she strode into his room On The Warpath was House, lying limp in his bed wearing a t-shirt that had a patch of sweat at the neck and at the base of his ribs. His hair was sweaty at the front, and his eyes were dull and reddened. She could almost feel the fever burning off him, and the first thing she could say was You Idiot! You're sick, you need to go to hospital right now!

House seemed to draw breath, presumably to repost or protest against this, and when she heard how he was breathing she snatched a stethoscope off Wilson, and only hesitated for a moment before she put a hand on his chest, feeling how hot he was through it foremost, and the muscle there.

She didn't hesitate any more, though, and she pulled up his T-Shirt to listen to his breathing at the front, pulled him forward gently so she could pull it up at the back and listen too. She could see his ribs. He grunted, didn't stiffen but twitched. She didn't need to tell him that he was sick, so when she heard the phlegm and infection in his lungs she just looked at Wilson, who was just standing there looking, and probably feeling, useless. When she was finished she straightened up and looked at Wilson again, and he looked back at her, his look saying 'what can I do?'.

House fumbled his T-shirt back down, and coughed, a horrible, booming, loose cough. When the fit (because that was what it was like) finished his eyes were half-closed, and he seemed not to care that they were in his room any more. Maybe he didn't know. He lay back on the pillows, hovering one hand minutely closer to his leg, and reaching one hand to the glass of water on the bedside table.

His hands were shaking, and it was most of all the sight of his long fingers shaking that galvanized Cuddy, not the sweat on his forehead or the dazed look in his blue eyes. (Those eyes could be misleading, thought Cuddy, because when you first saw him sometimes all you saw was blue eyes, and not what was in them. She guessed that those blue eyes had broken a few high-school girls' hearts, when they realized the mind attached to them was so… different. Or maybe not. Maybe they hadn't gotten close enough to notice.)

She said his name, then said it again, and Wilson had finally moved closer and shaken him, until one of Those Blue Eyes cracked open.

"You need to go to hospital."

"Wait."

One word, and still his stubbornness fired up, and he could still raise his eyebrows, so he did.

"No!"

She kept talking. That was important.

"No, House, if we wait you'll be going to the hospital on a gurney. This way is better. Do it now, at night, while you can still walk."

There. She had said it, and something had clicked, because he had shifted slightly in bed, probably testing movement, and nodded.

Cuddy stepped off the Warpath. She breezed out of the room. She felt like crying, but that was OK, because she wouldn't. Not here, in House's apartment, while Frank Zappa looked on from an album cover. Wilson nodded, and she thought that if he talked his voice would have that stressed break in it. Like hers would. Unshakeable Cuddy.

* * *

House felt the cold stethoscope, bringing up goose-pimples on his back. He understood, now, he thought. He would go to hospital. If Cuddy wanted it bad enough to come into his bedroom, then it must be bad. And it was. He wondered if he could get up.

He heard more talking outside, then Wilson walking around.

Then he was in the room, telling him to not go to sleep now, talking like he was a child needing to be coaxed. Wilson told House they needed to get up, and he understood that. He was an early riser, but it was really early now, wasn't it.

Wilson sat next to him on the bed and helped him manoever himself onto the edge, because being this sick was like being really drunk – your body didn't care what you wanted to do and you didn't care either. He leaned against Wilson, and sensed that Wilson was more uncomfortable than he was, because he was too out of it to care.

He remembered the sudden cold as the t-shirt lifted over his head, and the feeling as a shiver went up his ribs and his nipples stood up, but then he was remembering something else and being dressed for school when he was too small to tie his own shoelaces. As Wilson took his shirt off and threw it in the corner, he opened his eyes but slumped down more. Wilson was sitting close to him, on his left-hand side, and House looked down at Wilson's polished shoes next to his white feet as he felt clothes in his lap. He looked at the way he had a bend in his second-smallest toe, the veins standing up on top of his feet. He could smell Wilson's cologne. He heard his mother telling him to stop shuffling so she could tie his shoes.

* * *

Wilson sat down next to House, slightly uncomfortable. He looked like he could hardly sit up, let alone change his clothes, so Wilson quickly pulled his shirt over his head, with House catching on about halfway through and lifting his arms up half-heartedly.

Wilson asked him if it was ok if he did the pants, and when House grunted he grabbed his sweatpants at the waist and pulled them down smoothly, looking at their feet the whole time and giving House time to guide the elastic waist over his right thigh. As he bent over House leaned on him slightly, and he felt the corrugations of his ribs against his shoulder, and House's heat through his shirt. He froze for a second. He was bent over double on his best friend's bed with said friend half-comatose and leaning almost on top of him, his breath laborious, catching as the cold hit his legs. Would he get House up now? Or dress him first?

Dilemma, but it the end embarrassment won, as human foibles often prevail even in the case of larger difficulties. He put a hand around House's shoulders and guided him to a sitting position lightly, even as he stiffened and opened his eyes again, still half-asleep, he thought.

He left House sitting hunched there (and now he had brought his elbows on top of his legs, so he had at least some alertness, but his head was still down and his breathing was still ragged), and rummaged through the drawers, grabbing a pair of soft sweatpants, the kind meant for warming up before soccer games and jogging on the weekend and staggering down parallel bars, as opposed to a pair meant for sleeping and lounging around in, and a t-shirt, and a winter flannelette shirt with holes in the elbows.

Socks were next, a singlet. He looked at House, trying to avoid looking at his underwear. He had one hand on his right thigh, and Wilson glanced carefully at the scar before he put House's clothes in his lap, asking if they were OK. House nodded, breathed again, coughed. Wilson doubted if he would have objected to anything in his wardrobe at the moment.

Wilson again helped House with the pants, because it seemed to hurt his head to bend over, this time helping him get the legs up with the minimum of pain, which was awkward in a sitting position.

Wilson gestured to House with the other clothes and left the bedroom, feeling peculiarly relieved, like he'd just heard a laugh at the end of a long awkward silence.

He grabbed House's sports bag out of the closet. It was big enough to hold everything he needed tonight, and always seemed to contain a bizarre assortment of objects. He took a little box of jeweler's screwdrivers, a bunch of Allen keys, and an old summer change of clothes out of what Stacy had called House's Sulk Bag, and packed it. He'd packed a hospital bag for House before.

He grabbed House's toothbrush from the bathroom and the pair of joggers that were lying by the chair, his brightly-coloured custom-made insoles visible. He thought for a second before going to the couch and looking at what House had been doing for entertainment.

He'd been settled in nicely like only someone as experienced at it as House could, with assorted remote controls, two books and a glossy journal of some sort, record covers and the record player on the side table, his Discman and a pile of CDs. No PlayStation, so Wilson guessed that he had been queasy. He had a box of tissues and an overflowing wastepaper basket, a hot water bottle and other sick paraphanelia.

Wilson grabbed the book that was lying open and face down next to the couch (Oedipus the King, Sophocles, weird sick reading, Wilson thought, but he wasn't House), and another book, a Morse mystery, which was more along Wilson's taste in convalescent reading. He put House's Discman in the bag after checking that the batteries were still good, and grabbed a couple of CDs off the pile.

The piano works of Erik Satie, someone Wilson hardly knew other than that he was an esoteric Frenchman, was in the player, and Wilson grabbed the top two discs on the pile, something House had burned himself, with shorthand track titles scrawled on top, and the Stones' Sticky Fingers. He hoped that was OK. He grabbed some other nondescript household items that he hoped would be useful, and walked through to the bedroom again.

House had fought all three shirts on, and looked slightly more here than he had for the last half an hour or so. He had his leg up on the bed and his eyes closed, although not on fever or sickness. When Wilson walked in and grabbed a change of clothes and put it in the bag he readied himself to stand up oh-so-slowly, but Wilson asked him to wait and ran out to the car. It was as good a time as any.

* * *

House sat there with just a pair of trackpants on for a minute when Wilson left the room, stunned, the illness holding him in some kind of inertia. He had to get clothes on so he could step out in the cold and go to Hospital. He eventually struggled the singlet and t-shirt on weakly, his arms trembling. The shirt was a bit harder, but it was cold outside and he would freeze and tremble, and he was already, so he eased his arms into the holes that suddenly seemed too complicated, pulled the shirt clumsily around him and fumbled most of the buttons, his fingers stiff, his arms close to his sides. He felt hot again, so he hoisted his leg (which was hurting) up onto the bed and closed his eyes, waiting for Wilson.

Wilson came in with his bag, his Doghouse Bag, his swimming and hockey bag, his hospital and PT bag, his sweat-soaked bag that still smelled like chlorine and mouth guard Listerine in the corners, and banged drawers. House opened his eyes and looked at him. He was packing his bag. Wilson told him to sit tight, to hold on, to sit on his hands, and walked out with the bag.

House wasn't one for sitting on his hands. He grabbed his cane and readied himself to stand up, gauging his steadiness, just sitting and breathing and trying not to cough.

* * *

Wilson started the car, turned the heater on, left it running outside House's apartment. He quickly checked that nothing flammable was on in the kitchen, turned out most of the lamps and went into the bedroom, finally spying his wallet and keys in the pocket of a pair of pants on the floor, grabbing them.

House was sitting there, upright, shivering, with his cane in his hand, his black everyday cane. As Wilson came through the door he pushed himself up with what looked like a lot of effort and steadied himself with a hand on the end of the bed, before taking a breath and walking across the room.

Wilson wondered how far that cane would support him. He didn't look steady, and he quickly reckoned that he'd probably make it as far as the piano bench before he had to sit down. He gave House a quick "Can I help?" look, and House dropped his eyes to the floor. Effective two-second non-verbal communication.

How did he do it?

* * *

House didn't remember much of the journey to the hospital. He remembered wanting to walk out on his own, and he also remembered almost breaking one of his fingers against the cold metal handrail as he slipped on the stairs. He spent most of the short walk out to the car leaning on Wilson, and in his state of mind it had seemed like Wilson can almost carried him, they had run out of the house with Greg almost putting his full weight on Wilson.

* * *

House walked out to the piano bench, and sat on it, his eyes closed. Wilson asked if he was ok, and he said yes at the same time as standing up, which caused him to stumble, looking as if he was about to lose balance and rush towards the floor any nanosecond now. Wilson found himself putting his hands under House's arms as he almost fell on him (pretty sure he would squash him if he put any more weight in him), and telling him to walk, because he couldn't exactly stand there any longer with House in his arms, and if he sat down he might not be able to get him up again.

He steadied House and slipped under his left arm, and by the time they got to the door he had his hand around his waist, and he was sure that he was supporting most of his weight. He was definitely keeping him upright, because he seemed to have lost all of his sense of direction.

As they stumbled oh-so-slowly down the stairs (it must have taken them ten minutes to cross from the bedroom to car), House took a chunk of wood out of his cane (and very nearly took a chunk out of his finger) when his feet slipped on the icy stairs, powder and snow and slush splashing around both their ankles, breath rising in the air and making even Wilson's nose run.

They both almost fell A over T down the stairs. House grunted in surprise, and Wilson stopped for a second to catch his breath. Shee-it.

After that Wilson grabbed his cane (because it seemed to be harder for him to actually manage something so complex), and they limped as quick as the snow on the sidewalk would allow over to Wilson's car, which had thankfully not been stolen. As Wilson opened the door Greg leaned against the side of the car, looking spent. He almost collapsed bending over to get into the car, and Wilson put his seat right back and guided him in.

By the time Wilson returned from locking up the house, Greg was asleep, or at least his eyes were closed. He looked cold.

Wilson turned the heater on and drove.

* * *

House awoke, and he was in the car. He could hear puddles splashing and the heater blasting away at his feet. He dragged his head across to look at Wilson, and he told him it wouldn't be long.

* * *

For the last ten minutes of the journey to the hospital House slept. Wilson tried to wake him up as he got closer, but House just grunted and turned away. Wilson supposed that if worse came to worse he could slap him or something to wake him up when they got to the front entrance.

He brought the car around to the front of emergency, and Cuddy was waiting. How they both managed to wake him up (and get him out of the car and up through the doors without a wheelchair) he didn't know. What he did know was that it involved a lot of quiet whispering, a lot of leaning.

* * *

Cuddy was waiting outside emergency as Wilson drove up. House looked worse, if that was possible. He was dressed now, at least.

They got him out of the car, eventually, by calling his name repeatedly, nagging, trying not to make a scene, because House didn't want it to get around the whole hospital that he was sick, although it would eventually.

He tried to walk up through the doors as normally as possible, and Cuddy thought that he did a good job of it, too. She wondered how hard it was for him to walk like that, to straighten his back.

He still leaned in them a little bit, though, leaning on Wilson more as they walked through the door, and as he straightened slightly as they walked past the desk she noticed how tall he was.

She had known that he was tall, of course, she'd seen him ducking his head under ceiling fans and closets, seen his long stride as he ran, seen how he could sit on the benchtops in the Oncology lunchroom with his legs straight out. She'd seen him stoop a lot, though, and it seemed now that he was using his height.

It worked, at least, because House used his height all through triage, and X-ray, and he didn't pass out or collapse all of this time. He used his height right until he landed in a hospital room, where Wilson drew the blinds as he threw up all over himself, and then passed out.

Whatever worked for him.

* * *

A/N I've read something very similar to House's little italicised _it's cancer... _SOCspiel up the top there, in Sydedalus' (bows down to Sy's greatness) great fic _Of a Thursday._ This resemblance is inintentional, I only noticed it when I read Sy's fic a second time.  
Blame it on the mass unconscious. 

Please don't squash me.

Cheers.

AE.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: the chapter quotes here are shortened significantly from the HF version. I'm a believer in equal opportunities quoting. This chapter is shorter than the others, and I had the most trouble with it in terms of syntax and stuff, so bear with me. It gets better, I believe.  
**Disclaimer: **I don't own House. Nor do I own the books mentioned.  
**Other fiddly stuff: **the beginning of chapter one.

Thanks to all who reviewed.

* * *

TWO.

_Everyone laughs and I dunno what's so funny._

Tim Winton – That Eye, The Sky.

_There is a fairly regular order in which the dimensions accelerate; leg length as a rule reaches its peak first, some 6 to 9 months ahead of trunk length. Shoulder and chest breadths are the last to reach their peaks. Thus a boy stops growing out of his trousers (at least in length) a year before he stops growing out of his jackets._

J.M. Tanner - Foetus into man: Physical growth from conception to maturity.

* * *

As Wilson had supported him while they dashed to his car (House's arm draped over Wilson, with Wilson holding his wrist and side in a death grip, House limp like a piece of overcooked spaghetti, just tall enough to overbalance Wilson but not tall enough to bang the top of his his head with his pointy chin), House had heard the snow crunch under his feet, and had thought that it had sounded funny.

As they drove the puddles splashing seemed to have some kind of rhythm, and then when they had driven past a corner store with neon lights and a bright fluorescent interior, the lights had followed as an afterimage in the corner of his eye. He thought that if he was a little bit more out of it, he would have heard those lights, and the steady splish-splash of the puddles would increase in volume until it was all he could hear.

As it was, he had experimented with opening and closing his eyes (because they felt scratchy) until he realised that they were closed, and he was falling asleep.

_When House was fifteen, he had carried Ronnie Dexter up the hill at the end of their street._

_It had happened like this: Ronnie Dexter was eight, and had red hair, a very pale complexion, and freckles. Gregory House was fifteen, and he was already tall. He had thought that maybe his sharp angles would decrease as he got taller, but he was still as lanky as ever, still with the same bony knees and elbows and runner's build. He was taller than his dad now, his Dad with his thick army physique._

_It was Saturday afternoon, and Greg was walking home from work, work being plunking away at a tinny old piano down at the old folk's home while the old people wharbled away. It wasn't riveting, and the hall at the retirement home smelled like lino wax and disinfectant, a smell he associated with the halls at school and the dank passages of his Dad's base, but it paid OK, and the ladies let him come and play the piano afternoons if he wanted. Last week when he had arrived home his Mum had asked him how it was, and he had replied that it beat playing in a whorehouse, Mom, and his Dad had taken away his money._

_(He'd already made himself clear that he would rather his son worked in the supermarket stacking shelves, or spent his Saturdays marching with the Cadets down at the Base for twelve hours). Two years ago he probably would have swatted Greg around the ears with his Newspaper. Last Saturday he had just taken Greg's cheap wallet wordlessly and emptied it, throwing it back to his son roughly with his library and school card slipping out, the foreign notes he had in there even though he didn't need to spend them any more._

_Greg was walking through the park at the bottom of the hill he'd have to walk up to be home, the hill the type that kids could crash billycarts on , the park hardly more than a small patch of trees connecting two streets._

_He thought that he might have found the park a lot cooler when he was smaller, because he'd never really lived near a real park before, the type with grass and benches, and drinking fountains, and a bandstand, but they weren't living here then, so he didn't know that for sure.  
_

_He'd just dropped in at the used book store, and he was carrying a old senior Chemistry textbook (because he made a little extra in the side writing essays for dumb football players doing remedial work, and it was interesting), and a dog-eared Lew Archer private eye mystery with a Scotch bottle on the front._

_  
He was walking along the wet path, scuffing his joggers before him and reading his book, when he heard a dense thud, like a sack of wet laundry hitting a tiled floor, and a short piercing scream, a little-child scream, a ball-shrivelling shriek. He stopped dead, a nervous shiver prickling it's way over his front._

_In the patch of trees just ahead of him Ronnie Dexter was lying, screaming his head off, cradling one elbow in the other hand, kicking his legs and arching his back so his shirt rode up and showed his white stomach, his belly button._

_Greg didn't know what to do. He thought if he left the kid here he might scream until he choked or something, and he was out of earshot of the street, with the sounds of the nearby main road and the thick trees muffling anything._

_Within two seconds of staring at Ronnie Dexter, and within ten seconds of hearing that first thud, Greg had dropped his books and shrugged off his coat and bag in one movement, and come to a skidding stop on his knees next to Ronnie, the wet ground just starting to send cold through the thin knees of his jeans._

_He noticed that Ronnie's straight red hair was parted to one side so he could see a line of pure white scalp, and he thought that Ronnie's mum must have done his hair this morning, combing it and saying "Now run along and play Ronnie, but don't mess up that hair for Auntie So-and-so this afternoon"._

_Ronnie wouldn't stop screaming, and when Greg called his name (he hoped that was it) he just screamed 'Nuh, Nuh' and rolled over onto his obviously injured arm, and started to kick his legs. Greg tried to hold him down, stop him moving for a second so he could get his attention, but he just kicked harder, and Greg knew he didn't even know who it was._

_This wasn't working._

Before Greg knew what he was doing (he didn't even know the kid, really), he had cradled his hands under Ronnie's knees and back. He didn't feel anything but the numbness of an adrenalin rush when he lifted Ronnie clear from the ground and got to his feet in one quick movement, his toes dragging and scrabbling for purchase, but when he woke the next morning he would have an ache in his upper arms and a knot in his back. It was awkward, not only to carry the kid while he struggled, but to pick him up like this at all. He didn't know the kid. This sucked.  


_That's what he thought the next morning as he lay in bed late for once, hearing his Dad's feet stamping around the house trying to get him out of bed, feeling the ache in his arms. That sucked. I felt like a sap. How could it ever feel good to cradle someone else in your arms when you still tried to pull away when people put arms around your shoulders? Would he always be such an awkward fool?_

_He had rubbed his shoulders and smelled pancakes and thought about how in the space of one minute Greg House, Jockbait who had knocked down the school shithead on his first day, had scooped the child up and run with him through the park and up the street._

_Ronnie lived one down and across from Greg, and Greg came sprinting, running for his life, flat-out exhaustion hit-the-wall running up the steep hill, Ronnie screaming in his arms, his legs bruising Greg on the ribs and side. At first he screamed and kicked his legs, but then his body went limp, and Mr Dexter looked up from his lawnmower to see Greg House from across the road, his face wide-eyed and suddenly boyish, run up to him with Ronnie screaming in his arms, his limbs flopping, one brown leather shoe unlaced and loose._

_As Mrs Dexter had run out, Greg had breathed again and thought "I carried him up the road." His hair was suddenly wet and cold on his brow. As Ronnie pulled away he left four perfectly circular finger-bruises on his arm. The first time he had to pick up a hot feverish child, he had thought of Ronnie Dexter again._

_(As soon as Ronnie could come outside again he had knocked on the House's door to get Greg to sign his cast. Greg's mum had shown Ronnie to his room, grinning, telling him that he had a fan. Ronnie had hung around and annoyed him and finally kicked his shins until he folded and signed the damn cast. _

_Ronnie hadn't gotten that House was a jerk, fifteen years old, an expert on everything, rude, contrary and abrasive, and above all fucking wierd, and until they moved away again he had come over regularly, looking up to House, trailing him when he walked to the bus stop. House could never shake him, so he went along with it, corrected his grammar, made sarcastic comments about things he said, told him just what to say to the kid who teased him about his hair, asked him if it worked.)_

_When they moved away Mrs House wrote to Ronnie's mum, and once Greg got a postcard from some holiday destination, covered in messy childlike handwriting. Their mothers were still friendly - Ronnie owned a fishing tackle shop, he was married with two kids. He had sent Greg a get-well card when he was still laid-up in Rehab, obviously working through the Mother News Network, but House hadn't really spoken to him at the last family wedding he had grudgingly attended, still with Stacy. He had just nodded, saluted sardonically with his cane. He had been fifteen, for God's sake, and he'd never wanted anything in return for carrying Ronnie Dexter up the hill._

_He hadn't wanted to in the first place. Why? Just because he didn't want to touch him. But he had. It was like that._

_

* * *

_

Cuddy click-clacked her Dean Of Medicine shoes over to the main desk, didn't bother walking to the phone in her office, got a room for House and asked for the admissions people to meet them there. She then called Curtis from Lungs, an old guy with a couple of research papers under his belt, who was competent and cared more for the hospital golf draw than office politics. He had never brushed up against House, and knew him by reputation only, both professionally and socially. Perfect. House would hate that he was being treated by him, but at least he wasn't being treated by someone who hated his guts.

She couldn't get a single room, but she managed to avoid all parts of the hospital that he'd resided in before. That was also a bonus, the thing she had been worried about, and Wilson too.

Just as she had been about to leave his apartment (she had turned around and was just looking at the Gameboy and what she assumed to be game cartridges scattered on the table near the door), when Wilson had said "Lisa, uh, whatever you do, don't get him a room near where he was when It-happened-with-his-leg. Not even on the same wing, if you can help it."

She had nodded, and he had sighed and said that the last thing they all needed was House depressed and feeling sorry for himself any more. Amen to that, Wilson. He would, actually, never forgive her for putting him even near the room he had died in.

_The first or second week he'd been back at work, he'd been walking through the corridor with Cuddy, arguing about something and limping like the devil stepped on his heels. He was walking fast, and following Cuddy as she headed toward the ICU. He hadn't been watching where he was going, and she had turned around to hold the doors for him as he walked into ICU's wing. All of a sudden he had trailed off in the middle of a sharp retort about the Clinic, and as he had realised where he was and looked around (because it had seemed to be the overhead paging system that had alerted him first, some doctor needed urgently) he had paled visibly. But that was all. He had paled, looked around, opened his mouth like he was about to say something but thought better of it, finished the conversation with Cuddy abruptly and turned around as soon as it was finished, trying to look as if he wanted to spend the smallest amount of time in the ICU possible because he had things to do, actually looking as if the place set him on edge._

_The only other time she had seen a similar reaction in House was the first time he'd seen a patient code (she assumed) after he returned to work. House had been called in to consult on a man with unexplained rapid heartbeat, he'd just been examining the rash on the guy's belly, griping about the fact that he had to do work at all, when the guy had arrested just like that. House had moved automatically to do the things that doctors are conditioned to do when a patient arrests, but then he had stared at the paddles in his hands for a microsecond and handed them to the patient's attending. _

_Cuddy had rushed down the corridor (she'd only dragged him there to see the patient five minutes before) to see him standing at the doorway, staring, a carefully blank expression on his face, and when Cuddy had stood near him he had seemed to realise where he was. She had heard the squeak of his shoes as he turned rapidly, his urgent steps as he pushed his shoulder against the door of the Men's bathroom across the hall and down._

_The patient was stabilised. The attending could handle it, so she had cracked open the door of the Men's room, and said that she hoped everyone was decent before she stepped in. It was only a small room, one of the little alcove ones that they had, and House was the only person in it. His feet and ankles were visible poking out of the closest stall, and she had heard him breathing quickly as she stepped closer. He hadn't even had time to close the door. He was sprawled on the floor of the stall, arms straining as they supported him on the toilet bowl. She could see the muscles in his back and shoulders. He must have been in a hurry by the time he got to the bathroom, because his cane had clattered almost all the way into the next cubicle, and he looked like he'd almost collapsed where he was. Cuddy walked behind him, and he groaned and spat again. He whispered, Christ Almighty, into the bowl. _

_She had briefly wondered what to say, had asked if it was bad sushi. _

_He said leave it, Cuddy, his breath heavy, and she had thought that he wouldn't say anything more, but as she stood behind him he had shifted, slowly brought his knees closer to the bowl, touched his cheek against it briefly, asked if his arms had jerked like that. _

_When she had said she didn't know he had finally started to get up again, actually turning his sweaty face to her before turning around and retching again compulsively._

Curtis was on his way. Cuddy was getting worried. They should be almost at the hospital. She thought that Wilson must have had trouble getting him up after all, but Wilson rang and said they were close.

Thank God. They were almost there.

They manhandled him out of the car, but after he had leaned against it for a couple of minutes, their breath rising above their heads, he insisted on walking into the hospital on his own two feet.

So they walked to the room, albeit unsteadily.

The worst part of it was that he didn't even ask where they were going, just walked between Wilson and Cuddy, with Cuddy's hand hovering at his elbow. They took him as quickly as they could, hurrying through the partially darkened hospital with House beside them, feverish and half-grunting as he walked, his chest shaking as he tried not to cough, because when he had to they had to stop.

She thought, _He's gonna break that cane someday_, but she (and Wilson too, she assumed) just weren't in the mood for fighting House into a wheelchair, because she was sure that in his current frame of mind he would drag his feet and arch his back and trail his feet on the floor every step of the way.

Once, when he was in Rehab, when he'd just started walking on the crutches (so it was early, very early on, he still couldn't walk any distance), she'd seen him push a metal spoon into the spokes of the wheelchair Stacy was pushing, just long enough to bring the cheap hospital chair to an ungraceful stop, and for House to push himself to his feet with a grimace, almost falling on his face. Yes, Greg House wore stubbornness around his shoulders like a stage costume.

They tried to hurry him to the room as quickly as possible.

Cuddy noticed as they stood in the lift that he was winded after the short walk from Emergency. By the time they got to the right floor he was hunching forward to ease his breathing and the pain in his chest.

She kept thinking that he'd go down on his knees, that he would flop down onto the floor like he had in his first week at work, just going weak at the knees and flopping down with his chest and face first, arms loose at his sides or clutched around his thigh, legs tensed, but he didn't.

As they went through the admissions procedure, fixed to be VIP rushed by Cuddy, he started coughing with more severity, and when he spat something streaked with red into a tissue and slumped forward like he was about to pass out, eyelids drooping, things happened a lot faster.

They finally got him into the room and into one of those cheap moulded plastic chairs (Wilson guided him as his legs gave out, actually), and he sat there quietly for a couple of minutes, breathing and looking around impassively, the fingers of one hand fiddling with the frayed cuff of his shirt, until he jerked his chest, gave a massive cough before regurgitating what little he had eaten recently and a large quantity of sickly looking phlegm, over himself and his shoes and the floor and Wilson's shoes, before slumping forward into the Nurse's arms, amid shouts of 'OK', and the squeak of shoes on the floor, the dry clatter of his cane on the floor.

The nurse was helping him change, so she stepped out of the room as she drew the curtains, and as she stood there, more than a little shaken and feeling shocked with the sudden silence, being away from House and his sickness, she realised that Wilson was standing outside the room too, leaning against the wall. She breathed out. Wilson rubbed his face, laughed a little surprised chuckle, more like a grunt or a momentary constriction of his vocal cords.

It didn't seem like he was going to say anything else, so she said it.

"Shit."

"Yeah."

Now he was in bed, and Curtis had breezed into the room smelling of Old Spice and carpark and cold. House was semi-conscious, cycling through sleeping and jerking awake and gazing dazedly through half-open eyes. He was shivering again. He hardly reacted at all as Curtis listened to his chest, but when he mentioned that he was hot, House mumbled something unintelligible, swatted at the stethoscope on his chest.

As the nurse slipped the oxygen cannula around his ears his eyes opened and he made to grab at it, a panicked look on his face, but Wilson grabbed his hand and told House that it was best to get in before his lips went blue. House nodded, and he fell asleep. He looked as if he'd just remembered where he was.

* * *

Cuddy went home. Wilson was going to, but he realised that he had work to do and he wouldn't have much time tomorrow, so he told the nurse to call his office if there was any change in House's condition, looked through the door into House's room. The curtains were drawn around his bed, and as Wilson peeked through the curtains he saw that House was asleep, his chest rising and falling slowly, his eyes flicking wildly under their lids. There were two other patients in the room – one was in his twenties with long hair and a patchy goatee, asleep, the other was a skinny middle-aged man with an oxygen mask and a bald head. The bald man looked apprehensively towards House's cubicle, and as Wilson was about to go out the door he heard that cough again.

He watched as the nurse tended to House, but she gave him a dirty look, because visiting hours were over and there was nothing that a meddling doctor friend could do, but hover, annoyingly, so he scuttled back to his office, spent a gritty couple of hours doing paperwork and crashed out on the couch in his office.

* * *

House had a bad night. At least he was no longer hallucinating and sweating in his bed at home, but as the night wore on he had more and more dreams, he slept less and less and coughed more, until he was practically delirious and didn't know the bedsheets from a circus tent.

He hardly remembered being admitted, the car ride only slightly, but he slept soundly for a couple of hours (he could have said that he had slept like a log, except logs don't wake up periodically with sweat pooled under their backs) before waking with a hot, throbbing feeling in his groin and an image of Stacy in his mind, someone, him or her, calling.

He could hardly think, knew nothing but headache and pain and heat, but he had a perfectly clear running dream, an early-morning running on frosty grass dream, until he dreamed that his nose was bleeding, that he was running with a warm drip on his chin and blood streaming from his nose, breathing heavily through his mouth. He woke and couldn't go back to sleep, except because he was sick being awake was the same as sleeping. Everything was backwards.

Around 5:30 the pain in his chest diminished a little bit and he finally slept, really slept. He jolted himself awake not long after when his leg twitched, and freaked out suddenly because of the oxygen at his nose. He spent the rest of the morning drifting.

* * *

Wilson awoke with his cheek pressed to the leather couch at about six am, judging by the cold and the light filtering through the window into his office. He groaned. He had practically melted onto the leather, and it was actually painful to pull his face and forearms off the surface of the couch. He sat up, and his head pounded. He thought about House.

Typical. It could never be enough to just have a little cold, some flu. House had to leave it until he could hardly breathe, until he was practically delirious with fever until he let on that he was sick. Wilson felt guilty. He should have realised sooner. That was their problem, then. House didn't care enough, and Wilson cared too much.

That still didn't account for the fact that House had waited until he could hardly stand up to do something about the fact that he was sick, so Wilson factored in that House was an idiot. Doctors were the worst patients, and treating House (who had to be the worst of the worst) was an exercise in 'I will not scream. I will not scream.'

Wilson thought: First priorities: drink some water, eat something… have a shower. He thought that he should have some clothes around here somewhere... He grabbed a shirt from the bag he kept under his desk, sprayed some deodorant.

He headed for the locker room and showers, thinking that he could really use a sick day dozing on the couch in front of TV and eating ice-cream from the carton.

He hurried through the change rooms, disliking the slight ammonia smell, sweat and disinfectant and pee. He took a quick glance at the noteboard the various hospital sports organizations had, but didn't see anything that interested him. They were calling for people to apply to run the New York Marathon again. Wilson wondered if he'd try again, this year. House had been a far better runner than he was (according to House it was because Wilson 'breathed wrong and stuck his butt out'), and unless House was going to pull him out of bed at 5AM every morning there was no way he'd be motivated enough to train. Oh well. It really wasn't healthy to get competitive with House, Wilson decided, unless you were talking about sitting still or housekeeping.

The shower room was empty. He stripped off and showered quickly, because it was cold and he seemed to have miraculously chosen the cubicle that never turned up past lukewarm. He quickly used the cheap soap from the dispenser, lathering his hair and skin. He stood for a second with his head in the spray, trying to wake up, then stepped out of the shower gingerly, his bare feet slapping on the tiled floor, Wilson trying not to think about all of the gross foot fungus he could be picking up. He dressed in a hurry, grateful for the towels that the hospital provided, smelling of heavy-duty washing powder and chlorine from the pool.

* * *

House woke when the nurse came into his room. He did as he was told. He held his breath while they took an X-ray and breathed out while the nurse clapped her hands on his back. He spluttered while a young, nauseatingly cheerful lung guy came and held him with his chest down, coughing disgusting things up.

He went to sleep and woke up a short while later with someone holding his chest from the side, the touch uncomfortably impersonal, the hands always cold and smelling of antiseptic soap, the patronising wake-up call annoying and invasive.

He was grouchy.

House lay in bed. His lungs hurt, but it was easier to breathe now, with the extra added plus of him not being fevered out of his mind any longer. Being sick was scary enough… too sick to make his own medical decisions… that was just too ten years ago, really.

It was that mid-morning lull in the television. All of the Nice Morning Programs had ended, and it was nothing but infomercials and other cheesy programs until the soaps began. He'd already watched one and a half cycles of the ad for The Amazing Blow-Up Mattress That You Can Use Six Ways, and there was a documentary about Ancient Greece that he considered mildly interesting, until he realised that watching TV for this long still made his head spin a bit.

He lay back and closed his eyes, shut off the TV with the remote by his hand, cutting off the narrator's plummy accent mid-sentence.

Oh. A wake of nausea broke over him. He waited uneasily to see what would come of it, and nothing did, thank God. He looked around for the emesis basin near the bed, and grabbed it anyway.

A cough started deep in his chest, and he tried to hold it off, but soon he was sputtering and retching, breathing sharply, his chest hurting with the exertion. He coughed something into the basin, managed not to throw up this time, and lay back, exhausted, wiping something off his chin with a tissue. Gross.

He could feel the other people in the room, Asthma guy and Lip Piercing Guy respectively, gazing at him, and he wished he could draw the curtains for privacy.

First of all, they'd heard him referred to as Doctor, so they knew he was one of Them, as well as being one of Us.

Secondly, yesterday when he had gotten up to go to the toilet, his skimpy hospital gown, the likes of which were always too short for him anyway, had ridden up on the edge of the bad and revealed the scar on his leg. The sudden touch of the edge of the fabric had been shocking, the air cold, so he had made the mistake of hissing and grabbing at it, looking up after a moment to see Lip Piercing guy's eyes jerking away from his own, his cheeks reddening.

Well. He was mighty sick of being interesting to these people, that was for sure.

He lay back, thinking of all the things he was sick of. He was sick of winter. It just made mobility that much harder, he couldn't be out in the cold that long, and he was perpetually afraid of the kind of fall that you can't get up from. He was sick of going to sleep with a hot water bottle clamped to his leg. He was sick of lying in bed, sick of the rough feeling of the cotton hospital blanket. The novelty of being in pain 24/7 had lasted about as long as an Alka-Seltzer. He was sick of Donald Trump and the insult to rugs everywhere perched on his head. He was sick of the oxygen at his nose. He was sick of having to eat frozen peas.

He was sick of the voice of the guy who advertised those rug liquidation sales on TV. He was sick of the _tss tss_ sound of the Lip Piercing Guy's headphones, and the fact that he had listened to all of his own music ad nauseum.

He was very sick of the lack of privacy he had here: as soon as some fool walked by and saw him, as soon as some slackjaw from Imaging peeked in the room and saw him, it was around the place like shit through a goose that he was in the hospital, _like, actually a patient, yuk yuk_, and Wilson and the nurse had to turn away their visits and cards, or House had to pretend not to see through the glass wall as they took the long way around to see if he was really there. Hadn't they got that he was an antisocial prick already?

The thing he was sick of most of all, that he was thinking about now, was how his reputation had to precede him. If someone who wasn't a doctor, who didn't know him by his reputation, was being introduced to the hospital, he had heard what they would say about him. He would walk by, animatedly arguing with someone or stand in his office bouncing a ball against the wall, and they would say _Oh, that's Doctor House_, in the same tone of voice they'd use to say _That's the vomit stain on the carpet_, or that _he's a cripple we have to feel sorry for him_ tone. _That's what happens if you don't wear a bike helmet, if you drink and drive, if you don't wear safety glasses, if you smoke, if you fuck up, kids, watch out. _Cautionary. He had even felt the tone that Cuddy had, half matter-of-fact, half apologetic.

Now, it was almost worse if the person being introduced was a doctor, because he'd hear snatches of conversation like: _That's doctor House? I read his article in So-And-So, didn't realise he was… dot dot fucking dot_ or _Oh yeah, I saw him six months back at that conference. Good presentation, mind you, we were all worried he'd fall up those stairs… He left before the dinner, they want him to present again… I wondered what he was doing with himself… Missed the conference in June... Will he present again?... Heard he's a real jerk, isn't he the guy that...He's really taking a break, isn't he?_

He just lay there, trying not to think about anything, waiting for something. The nurse came in and handed him the phone, told him a call had been run through.

He sat up a bit, adjusted the pillows under his back, moved his leg up onto a small one in the bed.

He put the receiver to his ear, looking at the pattern of the cheap insulation tiles on the ceiling, drew up enough breath to croak a hello out.

"Hi Greg. it's Mom."

Warm.

Not many women could make him smile on the phone.

Oh. Huh. He smiled a little bit, just to himself. "Oh, Hi."

He motioned to the nurse for a little bit of privacy, and she took away his basin, checked the oxygen and withdrew, closing the curtains.

He waited for his Mum to say something, and he knew that she would, because talking on the phone to Greg was like pulling teeth with tweezers, she said. Like drawing blood from a stone.

He felt good. It was actually good to be talking to his mother. He felt just like a kid.

There was a brief silence, and he could hear clothes rustling, like she was making herself comfortable. The TV was going in the background, up high, because Dad was a little bit deaf, and just before she spoke he heard a roar of laughter from his father.

He closed his eyes for a second. God, he was fucked. He shouldn't be thinking like this, and he thought that he should make an excuse and put down the phone and watch TV, think himself into oblivion, except that never worked and now he was talking to his mother while he could still talk.

Oh. Right. She was actually saying something, he had just been listening to her voice and wanting.

He suddenly felt a strong blunt pain at the back of his throat, like he'd swallowed a large ice-cube and it just wouldn't go down, and damn, he was breathing really deep and quick and wet. He swallowed.  
The pain was still there, and he cleared his throat, feeling the weakness. His hands were shaking. He said Hi to his mum and put the phone away from his ear for a minute and put his head back and squeezed shut his eyes so hard it hurt. They were tearing. The ceiling was blurry. Something warm fell down his cheek. Fuck. He said it. Fuck.

It came out as a whisper, and then he was talking to his mum, and she was doing what she had done when he was five, cradled him in her arms and stroked his hair, except her son was so far away, she had never got him back, what were they going to do with that boy? Even when he had been thrown out of preschool for writing a dirty word all over the bathroom, he was her special boy. Always, through fights and silences and Greg walking home shamefaced in his undershirt with his bloodied shirt in a bag. Now he was... What was the word? Damaged. Well, they had all tried their best. She had always tried. He didn't want to let her down, but he did. House was an anomaly, that one fuck-up, SNAFU, and what could she do with her boy? She could soothe her forty-plus year old son as he cried on the phone. She could tell her husband that he was too sick to talk, that he had fallen asleep. She would talk with him until it was back to everyday things, he would get bored, maybe he'd fall asleep. It was all she could do.

* * *

Wilson talked to the nurse, the one with the squeaky shoes. Dr House was on the phone, she said. She wasn't sure if he still was, but he had requested a little privacy.

Wilson stepped carefully towards the curtains, announced himself. House didn't tell him to go away. Wilson heard him murmuring something, to the phone he assumed, so he opened the curtains slightly and put his head and shoulders through.

House looked up in surprise, a look of genuine hurt and shock on his face, like Jimmy had punched him in the gut. Slapped him in the face. The look was so un-masked, so instinctive, that he looked like he was dumb for a minute, like he didn't know his own name.

His blue eyes were red, so red, and swollen. He sniffed, and stared at Wilson, his face flat, not hiding anything, because how could you hide anything like that? He had been crying. Wilson thought he would be happy if the roof caved in on him. Fuck. He was a heel.

* * *

Wilson left. House didn't think anything, just put his hands to his face and cried like a baby. Wept, the hollow, compulsive, uncontrollable shuddering of depression and grief.

He didn't know what he was grieving for, just that the need had settled down on his chest like a weight, the same weight that was always waiting to ambush him. Hence the thought that he was Fucked Up Beyond All Belief.

He could feel his cold fingertips, the callus on the side of his right thumb and forefinger rough against the side of his cheek, his face wet to his hands. He could taste salt as the tears ran into his mouth. He tapped his fingers a little bit on his skull, flattened one hand against his forehead and hit it with the other, finally whispered FUCK into his hands until he wasn't crying any more. He felt empty. Thank God. He turned on his side, curled up as much as he could (assisted by some pillows) and, indulging in this position, fell asleep thinking of the floor. Thinking of opera singers who fake sob as they come off into the wings.

* * *

Wilson murmured an apology, withdrew, and when House didn't mention it, neither did he.

He had only once seen House crying before this time, and that had been harrowing as well. As everyone well knew, House wasn't someone to wear his heart on his sleeve.

House was still living with Stacy. Infarction time Plus three months, five days. They had invited him over, House saying that he wanted to actually sit at the kitchen table and eat something, maybe they could go out after and play a few games of Foosball. One, if he was too tired.

Stacy saying that it would be good for him to do something structured, not sit around and play Nintendo. When she had said that she had looked at Wilson, given him a slightly critical look, like she thought that Wilson could do more for his friend than sit around and let him win at Mario Kart.

Wilson had turned up at their place fifteen minutes early, wearing something other than sweatpants to set an example for House. He had parked his car and walked towards the door, but as he strode along the footpath he had heard raised voices. Angry voices. He couldn't hear what they were arguing about, but as he agonised over going in or not, it sounded violent and crazy and angry.

He heard Stacy, and House, strident, in his Yeah-of-course-I'm-pain-fuck-you-for-asking voice.

He stood there and heard House say something like go ahead, leave, go FUCK someone. Stacy saying he was ridiculous, stop it, Greg.

Or maybe that was how he had remembered it.

Before he could move, Stacy had opened the door and flown down onto the path, looking so angry that Wilson felt scared and angry at House at the same time. Her hands were shaking. He heard a shout from within, a strangled cry, and Stacy had said she needed to get away, they didn't have any sour cream, besides. Wilson had tried to say something, but she had just sighed and motioned inside their apartment and said that he should see what he was doing, she was sorry it-was-both-their-fault-it-was-hard-something-stupid-snowballed-she-needed-to-get-away. Wilson had said be safe, and Stacy had set off to the corner store not too far away from their apartment, on foot, he had noticed.

He had stepped into the apartment, hearing a familiar grunt and a sniff as he closed the door, and peeked into the living room to see House there on his hands and knees, his elbow crutches five feet away, his eyes red, his teeth showing as he grimaced. His cheeks were flushed and wet.

He had simply said Not Now Wilson, and Wilson had hightailed it to the kitchen, hearing House slam the door on his heels and scream vile obscenities. FUCK HIM, he had yelled, FUCK ME, COME FUCK ME! He had heard a half laugh, half sob, and House had stayed in the Living Room until Stacy was home, which was when they had dragged him out. Forcibly. It had been hard for Wilson to forget House glaring at him with his bare back against the couch, his left knee drawn to his chest, his chest still scarred from hospital, white and thin, little pink scars. He hadn't mentioned that again, either. The day Greg went bugfuck.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: **Ok, here is chapter three. For the disclaimer and other pedantic information, see chapter one.

By the way, the address of the House Fans board actually has an underscore between the House and the Fans. Fanfiction has a tendency to eat these things.

Thank you to all readers, reviewers and C2ers, for my other stories as well. Is it good form to reply to these sort of things, or what?

I assure you that all feedback is greatfully appreciated and enjoyed. Thanks guys.

Anyway: onward, onward.

* * *

THREE. 

…_that when I waked_

_I cried to dream again._

House came out the other side.

He was still lying on his side staring at the floor when sleep claimed him.

The nurse brought him his lunchtime pills. He'd even become used to relying on someone else to decide when he had his pills, the clock routine and flat-tasting water making it seem as if he had only broken out of Rehab yesterday.

They came in a little plastic cup, the pill cups that were the exact right size to draw a face on with a Sharpie and slip over your big toe when the doctor came to visit, little clear plastic cups with heat-rolled edges and VISYPAK on the bottom. When you slammed them down they made a peculiar _thokk_ noise, and he wondered again what it would be like to tip over a box of little medication cups. To swim in a swimming pool of medication cups. Waiting for your meds to be doled out made you think of these things.

When the nurse brought him his lunchtime dose he was hanging out for a Vicodin, but trying really hard to keep it away from the front of his mind, keeping the pain and the need at the back of his consciousness as much as he could, at a breathing and itch-scratching level. He took his pills, trying not to look like he actually needed them, because that would be a bad thing somehow.

He picked at his lasagne. The bolognaise tasted exactly like the stuff they had at Pizza Hut, but this particular offering was truly despicable. He wasn't exactly in the mood for a hearty meal, either, otherwise he'd be shovelling it down and not just moving it around with his plastic fork.

He still felt a little bit numb, really. He was tired, stupidly tired, absurdly tired, so he pushed the lunch tray to one side and rolled over onto his side, where there was still a warm patch on the pillow there. He moved his legs up awkwardly, and even though he knew he'd regret it (who cared if he was stiff? It wasn't like he was going to be turning somersaults any time soon anyway), he fell asleep curled. He crossed his arms loosely at the front, probably looking like a random scattering of loose limbs, completely awkward.

One elbow fell against the cold bedrail but he kept it there, concentrating on the line of cold against the soft skin of his forearm, feeling it recede.

He had a dream. To say it like that makes it sound like he was having some kind of deep vision, that his disturbed sleep was more than the product of his sickness, his overactive mind and underactive body, the depth of his tiredness, mentally and physically.

House dreamed. He always dreamed. He didn't think much of it.

House slept light. He always slept light, at least as long as he could remember, waking at night to ridiculous things like the fridge motor turning over, or a car horn three streets away carrying on the night air, the far-away scream of the siren at the base carrying far.

So he slept light, but at this time he also slept softly, if that was the word, in that he almost wasn't sure if he was sleeping, in that this sleep was so fine, so fragile, that he felt that if he moved or twitched or coughed he'd be back in his hospital bed. Awake. He wanted the sleep, so he lay there and tried not to offend the sleeping gods, clinging, grasping at the faint illusion of rest.

He had one last coherent thought before he actually fell asleep, and it _was_ like falling. Slipping.

Jeez. He was messed up.

_House was walking down the hospital corridor, which was nice, because he could smell toast cooking somewhere, and he had identical dips in the heels of his comfortably worn shoes. He was savouring the strong, straight, matching feeling to his legs when he felt something warm on the front of his shirt. That was funny. How odd. He was bleeding. He wasn't alarmed at first, but then all of a sudden he was standing against the wall in the bathroom and perfectly spherical drops were falling there on the floor and his shoes and the cuffs of his trousers and his coat, and he'd never get that out with pre-wash, and there was still that heavy, hot, stiffening feeling to the front of his shirt. His senses were assaulted even though it was a dream, perhaps because of it, and he could smell everything, the disinfectant of the bathroom strong enough to burn his nose, the blood in ten different adjectives at once._

_He took off his shirt, his shirts, all of his clothing suddenly complicated and awkward, twisting and reversing upon itself, to find the bleeding, but still the blood flowed, he couldn't find where it was coming from. He couldn't stop it. He wondered how many people, doctors, had died thinking_ I've got to stop the bleeding I can't stop the bleeding. _How many had known exactly what was happening as they faded away? Dying was dying, it didn't matter what you knew about it. He thought he might be bleeding to death and he couldn't find it, had nowhere to put his hands to apply the right pressure. He went outside and dripped blood on people, saying, can't you see I'm bleeding here and it won't stop and I can taste it. I can't stop it and I'm just walking around here bleeding to death._

The dream didn't end, it just stopped.

He was suddenly aware of the room, aware that the door was there and that his chest was dry, that there was no dark blood ingrained under his fingernails. That he wasn't walking around wearing a shirt that had stiffened in front, that he hadn't made pee pee in his pants.

He did notice that he was holding his breath, and he exhaled gently, listening for the faint TV noise from the rest of the room, the rustle of a newspaper. Right. He hadn't said anything, or if he had, they hadn't noticed. He hadn't yelled, he hadn't called out. He turned his head again so he was looking at the ceiling, rolled over slowly, lay on his back with his arms stretched out, doing nothing, not questioning the inertia of sleep. He could still smell lunch.

He thought about dreams. He'd always been the sort of person who dreamed in colour and remembered it, but his dreams were always weird, indescribably so, only vaguely recountable. Odd. Strange. Beyond anything but a bare-bones description of sights and senses.

He never thought of them as anything other than memory and chemicals, he was a little too cynical and not nearly human enough for that. He still remembered a lot of dreams, though.

He didn't just have bad dreams, of course, although they were the ones that he remembered the most clearly. He had running dreams, beautiful running dreams.

And Oh, God, the hockey dreams, thuds and that sweet crack as the ball made contact, dried grass flying and the feel of the mouthguard in his mouth, the coach yelling for them to _take it wide! _And_ Use Your Height House, what are you, a munchkin!_

Not to mention dreams about people. Yes. He had a lot of pleasurable dreams. And the detail. More than once he'd told himself something in a dream, something that was infenetismal and important. He still dreamed about Stacy. They were good dreams.

His running dream. He remembered that one. This was the college running dream, the one where he knew that it was early in the morning and that he'd driven himself to this empty oval just to run, he even knew that he'd had to throw a cup of hot water on the windshield of his shitbox duct-taped car as he had run out the door. He knew all these things, and he loved to revel in this dream, the hollow earthy thrum of his footfalls, the crunch of the grass, the pain in his teeth from the cold and the damp at his eyeballs. Even if this dream was so rudely puncuated by the arrival of a nosebleed, the first sensation of something warm, the drop on his shirt, the thought of his mother and Napisan and his nose… It was so good, his breath still rushing out of his mouth in a cloud of vapour as he grunted and looked down, brought the back of one hand to his nose, the beat of his footfalls always present, always strong. The running always continuing.

Yes. Even if House didn't believe in the power of positive thinking or auras or all that mumbo-jumbo, he did believe in dreams as what they are: in the brain. Was it supernatural? No. Was it chemicals in the brain? Yes, he hoped so, and if they made him gasp awake at night, so what? If he woke up with a stiffie and someone's name on his lips, so much the better.

He felt better now. Sometimes it was good to review old thought processes, to remember where he was at, to reposition himself, to firmly place himself on the grid.

He liked daydreaming, too. It was good to drift off thinking about something, but to have to go a thousand miles away, in a different time or situation, well, that could suffice. Archimedes' last words had been 'Don't touch my circles', hadn't they?

He lay there and dozed intermittently. He didn't sleep deeply again that day, and in that way he came out the other side. That was the only way to describe it, that he had emerged, that he was back at the other end of something.

He had had that one last bad dream. When he woke from it he saw that it was over, some missing piece of his cognitive function had fallen back into place. He was over the thick of it. Something had clicked. He knew it had clicked because it had happened before.

He dozed a bit more, thought, read his book as long as he could handle it, (the light in the room was all wrong for reading in bed) and then it was time to watch soap operas. They were pleasantly numbing this morning.

Wilson came before dinner, and they didn't talk much, but House didn't feel that they had to, always. Wilson did, more, because he did a whole lot more throat-clearing than House did. Dinner was the shnitzel. Yummy.

Towards the end of dinner, while House was eating his Jello (Wilson had brought him some cups) and Wilson was scoffing some of House's fries, the tension broke just like that for no reason. House sniggered and they talked a bit more, not too much, perhaps not yet enough for Wilson, but they were both content, no longer on edge. Cuddy poked her head in too, just checking, but by this time House's eyelids were nodding, and this was just bone-tired after-dinner mechanical eating. House was out like a light, neglecting to scrape out the last remnants of green from the cup, and he only just stirred as Wilson rattled the tray and the curtain rings rang on the track.

His sleep was uneventful.

* * *

As Wilson strode toward House's room first thing in the morning, he saw Dr Curtis coming out, looking somewhat harried (probably due to the fact that he had just been in the same room as House, and he was in no way used to him yet, Cuddy had called him in for the explicit reason that the only thing he knew about House was that he had once knocked over one of those hideous indoor plants outside the Respiratory Med offices, he had a reputation for being a misanthropic jerk and he was once in the position to litigate against the hospital for an untold large sum of money), but with that automatic, slightly smug look that meant that House was probably on the mend. On the other hand, maybe he was just glad to be out of the room. 

Wilson talked to him for a couple of minutes, looking for an opinion that wouldn't be interspersed with 'I can go home now'. House was 'bringing up some nice yellow sputum' (these Lung people really had an odd turn of phrase. Since when was coughing up yellow snot nice?). Basically, House was past the worse of it, and with a couple more days, crucial ones, (but to these Pulmonary people the only function of the body seemed to be breathing), he could go home and hope to not slide back before he got his feet back on the ground (that wasn't what Curtis said, though. He just said that Dr House 'seemed to be on the mend'). They talked doctor stuff for a couple more minutes, the stuff House would have called the boring details, and then he entered the room.

He was thinking of saying something along the lines of 'You're on the mend, I hear', or 'feeling better, champ?', but since none of these things didn't sound patronising or like something that you'd spoon-feed to someone who was terminally ill, Wilson just said hello and threw a paper bag with a muffin (the plain English kind, not the sweet choc-chip kind), a little container of butter and one of peanut butter, tantalising grease spots on the sides, onto the table next to the bed.

House was sitting up, his eyes slightly bloodshot and his breathing still murky, but other than that looking as if he just had a bad cold. He reached for the muffin without a word and ripped into the paper bag, spreading it over his lap and taking a huge bite, first hurriedly spreading it with butter and peanut butter, huge lumps of both.

Wilson told him to watch out he didn't choke, and glanced over to where the breakfast tray sat, mostly untouched. Ah. Today's special was watery, plastic tasting scrambled eggs or rubbery overcooked scrambled eggs. Yummy.

House was still working on his huge first mouthful, cheeks bulging. He chewed, then swallowed, coughing a little as if the swallowing hurt his throat. He reached for the plastic cup of orange juice on the table, took the straw out then took a huge gulp, cursing as he splashed a whole lot down his front. Wilson laughed. House smirked at him and flicked a drop of that awful watered-down juice at his tie.

House made quick work of the rest of the muffin. He was watching TV, some talk-show that Wilson wasn't interested in, although when he laughed (at something which wasn't accompanied by much canned audience laughter), he made a choking sound and dissolved into a series of wheezy, short coughs, before groaning contentedly and lying back. So, he was coughing, but he was either used to it, or it was just moderate enough to be an annoyance now. The bags under his eyes had lost a couple of pounds, too.

"That was a good muffin."

Wilson mumbled in reply, his head buried in the News section of the New York Times. No, he didn't have any more food hidden in the lining of his coat. House continued gazing at the TV, one hand absently brushing most of the crumbs off his front. (And into his lap).

"Do you think they use the same photo for the backdrop on all these shows?"

"Uh huh." Wilson gave a non-committal noise. House hadn't yet grasped that it wasn't possible to do two things at once, and he was concentrating on this article. Apparently, there was a new article publishing in the next issue of _CA_-

"Don't you have work to do?"

"Oh, didn't you hear? They've found the cure for cancer."

Wilson folded up the newspaper. House promptly grabbed it and pulled out the Features section, then started reading the first page.

Wilson sighed.

* * *

House let Wilson sigh, and started scanning the news. That was good, he wasn't too out of touch… His head spun a bit though, and he felt some thought tug at his mind, so he wandered off for a while. One hand crept out to tap the useless plastic knife from the breakfast tray against the edge of the table, producing a satisfying hollow stacatto. Tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap. 

The TV channel changed. Floor cleaner ad. Wilson said something, and he felt his mind snap back effortlessly, like a rubber band, from something about the colour of the face of Wilson's clinic badge. Was that Oxford Blue? Or maybe Prussian Blue? Cobalt?  
It was a good feeling, the wander, the sudden clear focus. Like a camera lens.

Wilson had stood up, but he didn't look like he was spoiling to leave, otherwise he'd be fidgeting more. He was just looking at House's chart, walking around to the end of the bed and leaning on it, one hand momentarily checking his tie knot, a reflex gesture that reminded House of nervous men at weddings and uniformed children at assembly. House thought that it was hard to not look on edge when you were wearing a tie… no wonder, he didn't know how people could walk around all day with something like that dangling at your neck and not feel like you were at a perpetual job interview.

"How's your chest feel?"

House wrinkled his face slightly, levelled one hand out in front of him and oscillated it back and forwards. Shorthand for: _Comme ci, comme ca._ OK. Average. Hurts, doesn't cane.

"No odd purple rashes? Extra toes? People talking to you that aren't there? Levitation?'

House shook his head on all those counts, and when Wilson said that it would only be a couple more days, he continued the dumb-show, raised his arms towards the ceiling, mimed a little victory dance. Asthma guy looked up from his National Geographic. It was an old issue, anyway, with the back cover missing. A waiting-room harvest, salvaged from among the women's and handyman magazines.

Well. About time. He knew it would only be a couple more days, but it was good to hear. He didn't want to stick around here too long. They didn't get the good TV channels.

Wilson said that he had a patient's test results coming through soon. He turned his head slightly to the side. Oh.

House still didn't say anything, and there was companiable silence. House switched the TV channels around, and was just considering makings some trite comment about Donald Trump's hair, but he realised that his bladder was getting towards the point of being uncomfortably full. He really had to pee, and you could only take procrastination so far when important bodily functions were concerned.

He pulled back the bed covers reluctantly, feeling the sudden cold. Damn cold. Damn cold floor. Damn leg. Damn orange juice.

Wilson gave him a slightly quizzical glance, and he said he had to pee.

Jeez, it was so cold after being in bed that he had goosebumps on the back of his knees. He awkwardly positioned himself on the edge of the bed, stiff, stretching his right leg out straight with a half-painful, half-pleasurable groan, like the groan someone makes when they stretch after sitting in a movie theatre for a long time, then slowly slipped off the bed, awkwardly balancing on one leg before trying out both. Wilson had handed him his cane like a flash almost as soon as he thought of it. Thanks Jeeves.

* * *

House unsteadily weaved his way towards the bathroom, and as Wilson followed him he felt House's younger roommate's eyes on his back, looking him up and down. Didn't these people have a magazine to read or something? 

Then again, Wilson was kind of glad that House wasn't in a private room… not so glad for the people who had to live with him, perhaps, but they seemed to be getting on fine. They hadn't had anything thrown at them yet.

House had reached the bathroom door, and after almost falling over yanking the door open he gave Wilson a sardonic look and stepped into the bathroom. Wilson was just standing looking out the door of the room, looking to see who was on duty at the Nurse's station, when House poked his head out of the bathroom and asked the older guy, the one with the asthma, if he could have at least burnt a match or something, and slammed the door.

Wilson just bit down on his snort on time, trod on his laughter over to House's bed, and stared at his chart until he no longer had the urge to laugh. Jeez. It was like being in the Fourth Grade.

* * *

House gobbled down his sandwich at lunch indifferently and sneered at Oprah. Wilson was busy, people to save, and Cuddy had 'checked in on him' this morning. He wasn't that tired now, he had just taken a Vicodin… he felt… active. He ran his fingers down the bars of the rail next to his hand, listening to the noise it made. Active. How was that so bad? 

It was about 12:30. Wilson would still be with the patient. Cuddy had some sort of meeting today at lunch, as far as he knew, probably the networking-with-people over bad instant coffee in a conference room sort of meeting. He felt like going somewhere. Why not?

House sat up and put an eye towards the Nurse's station. Magazine Nurse was reading, but Officious Nurse was talking on the phone, and her eyes could easily flick across this doorway.

House got up slowly. His cane was against the chair. Wilson. He sat on the edge of the bed for a minute, stretching his hands above his head, feeling his spine crack. When he was used to being in an upright position he carefully slipped his feet to the floor, feeling how cold it was, and stretched to snag his cane. Got it. So far, so good.

Rule one for escaping from a hospital room was Don't Fall Over As Soon As You Get Out Of Bed. As for Rule Two: His sports bag was sitting against the cupboard. He quickly leaned across and sat in the chair, unzipped the bag quietly and retrieved a change of clothes, the first thing his hands fell upon, an old sleep-t-shirt that Wilson had thrown in, a ratty old pair of sweatpants. The holy grail, a pair of loose boxer shorts.

He glanced towards the Nurses Station quickly. No change. Here was the crucial point. He ignored the other patients, limped stiffly towards the bathroom without looking at the nurses, the clothes clasped casually on the non-visible side of his body. He clicked the door closed lightly, tried not to cough.

He dressed as quickly as he could in the bathroom, wondering about it for a minute before simply hanging his hospital gown on the back of the door. When he was comfortable (and warm), he ran the water for a second and peeked out. Almost there.

Perfect. Officious Nurse was perusing a chart. He made sure he wasn't all that visible, gritted his teeth and walked as normally and flexibly as possible out the doorway, flitting (if that was possible) around the corner.

Escape successful.

He felt ridiculous. He tried not to grin, because it might not be wise to draw any more attention to himself, and concentrated on walking to somewhere a little less public where he could catch his breath.

Let's clarify a little, thought House. I'm wearing a pair of sweatpants that keep slipping down my hips and a t-shirt with a ring of holes around the neck. I'm leaning against the bare concrete wall just inside the fire stair well, staring at the spots of gum on the concrete, which are, by the way, right next to my bare, bony feet.

House rested. He thought. He was tired, but this was fun. How could he even think of going back now? How did he get this far?

He was too good.

He was an escapee.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Greg House, man-about-town and hospital escape artist.

He got moving because it was getting cold.

House was still fairly sick, tired and weak, his legs shaking from walking.

His bare feet slapped slightly against the floor and he was very obviously a patient, and by the look of his clothes, cane and general appearance (and the sympathetic stare one of the volunteers gave him as he exited the stairwell surreptitiously) probably a chronic and terminal one.

He was, however, an employee at the hospital, the type who considered it good form to know all the little escape routes and shortcuts. He crossed quickly to the lifts and wore what he hoped was his I'm-going-somewhere-I-should-perhaps-radiology-or-somewhere-equally-important face while he waited, facing the wall and leaning on the cane in front so no one could recognise him casually. He took the lift, and thought the game was up when an orderly gave him an odd look, but it wasn't.

On the ground floor he stepped down a ramp at the back of emergency, near the side entrance, one that was meant for rattling big goods trolleys along, and walked along a small dank corridor with a gritty (he could feel it) concrete floor with access to air conditioning ducts and bunched electrical leads, therefore bypassing most of emergency and the clinic entrance. He emerged behind one of the conference rooms near all the foundation big-wig type offices, in the newer, less hospital-like part of the building, on the other side of a short plush corridor and a bank of payphones to Cuddy's office.

Perfect. There was a nice little couch here, a vending machine, and hardly anyone ever came here, as it is with some perfectly well designed spots in buildings that just never see much traffic, the nook was too close to the clinic to see office use, and too far away for anyone to use over the more obvious seating area.

Naa. Why come all this way if he didn't steal a quiet nap in style? Besides, he could still hear the hubbub coming from the clinic, and he was too close, too exposed here where he could hear announcements and anyone could pass by. Any busybody who would recognise him.

He entered Cuddy's outer office after first peeking through the glass and testing the doorknob, and lay down on the couch. Perfect.

That was all he remembered, other than that he slept the sleep of the innocent, which says absolutely nothing towards sleep metaphors, thought House.

* * *

Cuddy was just wrapping up her meeting when Wilson appeared at the door looking ruffled. He waited until she was out of the room, but only just. He blurted it out, looking a peculiar combination of exasperated, worried and annoyed. 

"House is missing."

"What do you mean, missing?" Her tone withering. How could he be missing? This was-

"I mean, he's not in his room and they're looking for him. He couldn't have left the hospital, he's probably found a music room or fallen asleep in a waiting room or something-"

Cuddy was already on her way downstairs to organize this. God, he was an idiot. Seriously, she shouldn't be surprised. She and Wilson bitched momentarily about his inappropriate behaviour (and about how they felt half sheepish that they hadn't expected it), but then they channelled their anger into finding him. They were both worried. They were both pissed. Not a good combination.

Wilson checked the roof, even though he said that he didn't think House could get up there in the state that he was in (Cuddy personally thought a situation like this would just be the sort House would grab at to punish himself), and that he hadn't been up there for God knows how long anyway. She checked emergency and the clinic and his office (the latter looking very House-like, but not recently inhabited), and had all the department lounges checked for a sick-looking guy with a cane and a week-old growth of beard.

Wilson checked all through the ward, and she and a nurse systematically checked the pathology section, coming through to emergency and then the admin offices. Nothing. She hoped that House could see the storm clouds brewing, she really did. He was in Trouble.

* * *

House's ruse worked better than he imagined. He got to stretch his legs, a nice exhausting walk and a nap. He wasn't found until Cuddy clicked into her office to look at her diary after two hours of what looked like dirty, sweaty footslogging searching. Man, was she pissed. House couldn't get the goofy grin off his face. 


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Sorry it took me so long to update this...

Disclaimer and all that stuff in Chapter One. Comments/Reviews would be appreciated.

I stress that this story was originally written a long time before the advent of the Season Finale... Which hasn't even aired in Australia yet.

Cheers, and enjoy. (I think this is my favourite chapter, certainly the one I had very little qualms about when I was writing it.)

* * *

FOUR. 

_I'm so tired my feet don't touch the ground._

_I love the sky so much_

_I just fall straight down_

_I'm so tired my feet don't touch the ground_

_I love the ocean so much I might even drown._ - Eskimo Joe.

* * *

House lay down on Cuddy's couch, not the usual sterile standard issue waiting room type with rough fabric, but some sort of flowered affair, almost painful to look at and tasteless, but very comfortable, with soft cushions and armrests like pillows. Cuddy's office smelled like coffee and marker pens. 

He thought, Thank God for that last Vicodin. Blissfully, as he almost instantly realised that he was actually falling asleep, and thought: This is _well_ worth the walk.

He felt smug, somehow, and he smiled. (God, some nights he'd crawl across broken glass to feel like this). His eyelids were pleasantly heavy, and he let his mind wander, watching the office as they idly fluttered.

He thought about Stacy, but not for long. Then music, that old failsafe.

He half-recalled something, now just looking at the light through the orange filter of his closed eyes, and then he slept, in peace, without interruptions or people walking close by or the feeling that he'd wake up feeling monitored, on his back with one arm over his face. It was good, so good.

He must have slept for an hour and three quarters, more. He heard footsteps coming really close, not just someone walking by but someone walking in. A woman wearing high heels.

He thought about burying his head beneath the pillow in bed while Stacy got ready for work. Hiding. Pulling the covers higher as he pretended not to hear shoes squeaking or smell coffee and toast. Listening to her try to coax him out in the afternoon, saying, _I know you're not asleep Greg_, seeing her feet on the floor upside down from underneath the sheet.

It seemed sometimes to him that all he could remember of those first few weeks was bed, fuzzy images of himself hiding in bed, sleeping, trying so hard to think nothing and sleep that he never quite got there. It was ironic, considering that someone as bad at sleeping as him could have made such easy work of it that it was his one overriding memory of That time in his life.

He smelled her perfume. It was Cuddy. He heard the door latch behind her, felt his eyelids fluttering against his arm. He realised just how heavy his growth of beard was. He was fully awake now, the door had taken care of that, so he could hear everything. His head was amazingly clear.

Three steps came in, stopped suddenly. There was a silence, and House counted in his head, one, two, three, before hearing Cuddy's sudden intake of breath. Could he pretend to be asleep?

He lay there, not moving, waiting to see how things panned out. If worse came to worse he could fight her off with his cane and run away, he supposed. He felt like giggling.

(_Gre-eg's in trou-ble, Gre-eg's in trou-ble._)

"House!" Cuddy stalked close to him, savagely grabbing one wrist and lifting the hand away from his face (like she didn't know it was him, she must be checking something), then dropping his hand back with a furrow between her brows. Her fingers were cold. The temperature had fallen since he walked through the hospital.

He didn't say anything, he just rubbed his face, cleared his throat. He felt like stretching, but that might be a bit much. That really was a good sleep. There was something very loosely post-coital in the feeling after a nap like this, only more clean and less achy.

"You idiot." Cuddy didn't wait, just pulled him up into a sitting position, stared at him, made disapproving noises. House didn't say anything.

She pushed down on his shoulders slightly in a sit-down gesture, told him to stay, and left the room.

* * *

Cuddy rushed into her office to check something. She didn't even notice that he was in her office until she was really into her office and halfway over to her desk. 

Holy Crap. Greg House lying on the couch in her office, stretched out like he was lying on any dingy couch in a college dorm room, sleeping like a goddamned baby. Shit!

He was lying still, his chest still rising and falling slowly. She couldn't see his face, but she knew that he had a way of looking almost cute when he slept.

Well, he wasn't cute now. Turning the hospital upside down looking for a colleague and then finding them sleeping feet-up on the couch in your office is not endearing.

He was awake, had probably first woken up when she closed the door. She watched him lie there, saw one eye crack open slightly. The bastard. Cuddy took a deep breath. Ooh. He was really in it up to his neck.

* * *

A minute passed, maybe two. House yawned and tapped his feet and rubbed his eyes and looked around Cuddy's office, (too tired to actually get up and look at anything closely, he just let his eyes scan over everything, saving). He was still sitting in the same position on the couch, bare feet flat in the floor, knees bony and bent, when Cuddy came back in with Wilson in tow, his tie knot loose, the ends flapping around and turning over as he walked. 

Cuddy tossed a hospital gown in his general direction. Wilson's cheeks were red. Oh. Right. They were both angry. He'd half expected something like this, but they were really shirty. Man. One little nap.

The first thing that Wilson said was You Thoughtless Prick. Yep. That about summed it up at the moment.

House nodded, raised his eyebrows, made a '_Yeah, What Gives?_' gesture, spread his hands. Wilson made an exasperated scoffing noise, turned around into the corridor for a second with his hands laced on the back of his head. He was probably taking ten deep breaths. That was his style. Wilson had a powerful anger in him, he could be insistent and dogged as hell, but he was a pushover to calm down.

House thought that that was it for Wilson. Maybe next time Wilson came over to his apartment he'd soap his toothbrush for payback, or he'd steal his chips at lunch and say it was for making him tramp around the entire hospital searching for his sickly, sorry arse, but this afternoon as far as Wilson was concerned it was all over barring the shouting and perhaps some deep, caring conversation, which he could probably avoid just as skilfully as he could predict Wilson's reactions.

Now. Cuddy. Cuddy was staring at him. She, on the other hand, was obviously perfectly capable of being angry and rational at the same time. She gave him a dirty look, then her face set slightly like she'd just decided something. She took two steps and leaned around the doorway, (House was fascinated by the way she could just lean around, one hand on the edge of the door, in a sadly inquisitive, but also slightly pervy way, but it probably just looked like he was checking her out, which he was) said something to Wilson. He paid another mournful glance into the room and left.

Cuddy turned back to him. He wondered if she thought she could punish him for this with the clinic. Scary…But not a chance in hell there. They could drag him down the corridor kicking and screaming and clinging to things, or drug him heavily and tie him down to something heavy before he'd ever step foot in that clinic, and neither of those methods was in the patient's best interests, he supposed. So there. No clinic duty. Nuh uh. Not ever. Not gonna happen.

Cuddy gestured to the hospital gown she'd just thrown at him with one hand, the other still crossed over her chest.

"Put that on."

"Oh I don't know, Mrs Cuddy…?"

Cuddy just said Do It, and turned around to stare at the bookcase, putting her back to him. He could feel her listening, in the same way you can feel people's eyes on you the moment they think you won't be able to see them looking.

(He could also sense that she had adopted that Don't-talk-to-him-he's-only-trying-to-get-your-attention mantra, the same one he'd seen on the faces of girls and teachers and the people he had to deal with since the year dot.

The same look that had been on the teacher's face when he got sent to the naughty corner in year two for showing whoever was sitting next to him how to write a dirty word in the corner of their handwriting copybook, and then had proceeded to stand there making rude faces, sticking out his tongue and pulling both nostrils up with his thumbs, poking one finger out of the small hole in the front of his t-shirt. The same look he'd seen on the face of teammates and other students and people trying to cadge marks off him. The same look he saw Wilson shoot towards people on a daily basis).

It was still fun.

He sat on the edge of the couch and pulled his pants down to his ankles. It was cold in here now in just a t-shirt, and the goosebumps that started on his kneecaps and travelled up his legs gave his scar a rather odd and unpleasant feeling, not alien, but too much like cold fingers and the there-not-there feeling of numbed injection sites and nerve damage.

Was it Hemingway? No. No. William Faulkner? Said that if he had the choice between nothing and pain he'd choose pain. Well then.

It felt good to bend his back forward after lying down for so long, so he took his shirt off by bending forward and pulling forward from the back, crossing his arms over and grabbing alternate sleeves. His wrists and upper back cracked contentedly.

Even though it was cold, he sat for a minute. Cuddy still stood there, waiting. She was really still- if he was standing there he'd be reading something or touching that smooth paperweight thing to guess at the weight... She just stood there, straight, giving the bookshelf eyeburn and listening.

His t-shirt was still warm in his hands, and he could faintly smell the packaged bleachy smell of the gown.

He put one hand either side of him, the right one conveniently on the armrest, and heaved himself to his feet. He was tired from the walk through the hospital, his feet hurt (and they were cold, but feet are tough, and they could handle it) and his joints creaked in that after-sleep way. He hadn't realised, through a combination of forgetfulness, Vicodin (which was wearing off), sickness and sleep, that his leg would have a lot to whinge about due to the current chain of events.

Oh yeah. He didn't realise, until halfway through getting to his feet the I AM IN PAIN light powered on like an arc light at the back of his eyeballs.

For a moment a white crump-

(Through-Winter-Trenches-Cowed-And-Glum-Through-_Crumps_ – _that's what it was_-And-Lice-And-Lack-Of-Rum make it go away go away fuck off, please, fuck off)

-of pain shot through the entirety of his right leg, gaping from his balls to his toes, leaking hot into his abdomen. His stomach roiled. He swallowed hard, his adam's apple suddenly tight in his throat.

He thought, quick, think of something, oh fuck this shit don't think about that ah fuck what was that poem, what was it? _I knew a simple soldier boy _.

(He thought fuckfuckfuck again, but then it worked and immediately some snatch of verse rattled through his head, now almost a reflex, reminding him of he was six and the doctor had put something stinging on his scalp and stitched it, asking him of he knew the rhyme of the months yet, good boy, did he want to say it? How about again?)

He didn't scream or grunt or gasp, but it was a close thing. He didn't even hiss air in through his front teeth, something Cuddy would know as a _Pain Management Technique_, something he just called a noise, that comforting sss sound. Stacy had called it the In Between Hiss, as in between a scream and a groan. He did take a breath, fast at the start, holding it for a minute, breathing in deeply.

Cuddy put her head back slightly. She heard. She shifted slightly, so he could hear her skirt rustle and something clink in her pocket, but she didn't turn around. He didn't say anything, and neither did she, but he could almost hear her holding it back. She wanted to say something. She wanted so bad to say something. Something irrational and pained and bitter in his mind thought, Fuck Her for listening, fuck Cuddy for being here and hearing and pitying, and wanting to open her big fat sympathetic mouth, but he only thought that for an instant.

She shifted again, to cross her arms, sighing slightly.

He didn't want to sit down, so he stood the whole way up and stood there waiting for the muscles to get used to the weight, to shift, waiting for the pain to fade a little bit. Hoping to God that Cuddy wouldn't turn around and see him shivering there in his jocks.

He remembered Cuddy and rustled the gown, making like he was just taking his sweet time.

It hurt a little less. He fought the gown on savagely, just letting it drop down, sitting down as fast as he could (which wasn't very) with the sleeves concertinaed around his shoulders, breathing a long breath out, almost laughing, or coughing, deep in his throat.

A little while ago he never worried about how you could get dressed and only get up once.

A little while ago there was always a guitar pick rattling around in the bottom of his washing machine, and running trailmud tracked through onto the kitchen floor.

Then again, a little while before that he was yet to learn long division.

He was thankful that the leg hadn't spasmed, because he didn't like the carpet in Cuddy's office that much that he wanted it to meet his face, and blowing chunks in Cuddy's office, whether he wanted to or not, would be the clincher that would send him to the land of bumps and sneezes, the Clinic. Gross.

His leg still was still throbbing, but it wasn't as bad now, and he wanted to walk back to wherever he was going before he knew whether or not that little tantrum was the tidings of something much bigger and nastier.

He fixed himself up, stretched Leg: version 0.7, out, (no additions, some revision).

"Well, Cuddy, this is very revealing. Are you trying to tell me something?"

It was poor, but he wasn't feeling too crash-hot, and neither of them were counting.

He felt cold sweat on his forehead, on the back of his neck. His stomach and chest ached. He felt like shaking.

Good nap. Bad leg.

He wondered where Wilson had gone. Cuddy had sent him away, and he guessed that it wasn't to pick them all up a lollipop from the gift shop.

Cuddy turned around. Shock registered on her face for a second, and House almost checked if he'd left anything uncovered, but it was obviously just that he looked like crap. He wiped his face with the shoulder of the gown, reminding himself not to waltz around with it undone at the back.

He just sat there. He was good at being difficult. Being uncooperative came very easily.

Cuddy turned and gathered something off her desk, shuffled papers, straightened them by tapping them on the desk.

She said: "House. I do not wish to play games with you. I'm tired. Are you going to return to your room? Because your options are to either let me escort you back to your room or to refuse to return to your room and be escorted in a wheelchair by a very large security guard. You can sleep, or do whatever you do at night-"

That was a nice touch.

"-And in the morning you may be well enough to go home. I don't know. At the moment I don't care. If you try to sign out AMA, you're stupider than I thought you could be."

Every word was clear. Her mood was brusque, no-nonsense. That was no fun.

"Well, when you put it like that."

House raised his eyebrows and got his cane in his hands, gripped, re-gripped, prepared to stand.

Cuddy nodded. He waited until she'd turned away to walk out the door, but not so long that she'd have to turn around, before he started to rise.

It seemed like it was going to be OK. He launched up off the couch, scooting forward on his butt first, (deep couches could come back and bite you in a rather nasty fashion, he had found, lull you into into a false sense of security), grunting and taking the first long step in his left, and then he was on his way.

He stepped lightly for the first couple of steps, favouring the right badly, but by the time they were at the door through to the rest of the hospital his gait was almost back to normal. He stopped to lean against the door so Cuddy could do up the gown at the back, one knee bent, one hand high on the frame, bracing himself elbow, shoulder and hand. She hadn't thought that he'd like to get at it sitting down or with something better to lean against, and he didn't want to let on.

He could have said something. House thought that as he felt her hands for a second, heard her sigh in concentration. He could have said something, but he didn't. He shut up and breathed her perfume again. She'd been drinking instant coffee.

He felt more awkward than usual, more of an oaf than he usually did. He felt like he did before, a tall awkward guy who smelled of cigarettes and always pushed them away. But it wasn't the sleeping in Cuddy's office: he'd half expected that.

They walked back to the ward in silence, gathering a few puzzled looks (and knowingly annoyed glares, as well) in the lobby. Cuddy walked alongside House, guiding him with a hand on his elbow when they turned a certain way, or when they came up against a crowd of people.

When they came to his room Cuddy told the nurse he was fine for the moment, and he was shepherded in. Cuddy closed the curtains, wangling it somehow that they were in the room alone for a minute. He sat down. She took his cane.

Before he said anything she poked two fingers lightly onto his chest, (he felt her fingernails and the impact, first on his skin and then against the bone), and told him that if he ever pulled such a stupid fucking stunt again, she'd devise some punishment that he would find insulting and humiliating, she would. He was a doctor, not a child. He was not Ten Feet Tall And Bulletproof. He was a liability. He was the best diagnostician that she knew and it still astounded her how he could be so slackjawingly stupid. He was not well. You're gonna keep pushing, House. One day something's gonna push back in a way you can't handle.

House could suddenly see her think, _oh, hot damn, maybe it had_. He thought about that too. So that hung, awkwardly, like stale smoke with the windows closed.

Cuddy left, pulling open the curtains as she did.

They were really stiff, those curtains. He wondered how often they washed them. The nurse watched him.

He lay in the bed a maximum of thirty seconds, only really long enough to catch his breath and adjust all blankets and garments, to get in properly. Cuddy came back into the room, and straight through. Wilson followed her, looking slightly nervous, hanging back slightly. Cuddy didn't say anything, just came closer to the bed and took a wrist restraint out of her pocket, the soft-covered metal chain kind with a strap, and grabbed his left wrist. She was fast. He tensed every muscle in his arm and made to pull away, half in reflex, when he saw Wilson standing just behind Cuddy. One hand was on the edge of the bed, squeezing tight so his fingers were pooled red and white.

Oh. Well then.

She fastened the restraint around his wrist, fastened the other end of a short strap to the bedframe (so he could sit up if he wanted, but he was otherwise restrained), checked the tightness with a pinkie finger and breezed out. Wilson had half a wry smile on his face, but his eyes still had that sadness. House was in the right position to think Fuck Him, but he didn't, he just thought about the curtains again. Wilson left.

On second thoughts, that had been dumb. Still fun, though.

Just wait, House thought. He waited.

The nurse came and looked in on him at fifteen-minute intervals. When dinner came (fish fingers, thanks Cuddy, and accompanied by three overboiled pieces each of carrot and cauliflower and a little tub of tartare sauce that was little more than some sort of plastic mayonnaise with little green bits in it), she roughly cut it into portions so he could eat with one hand, and gave him a plastic spoon, the kind with smooth edges, presumably so he couldn't hurt himself with it. Protocol for people who were considered A Danger To Themselves Or Others Around Them. They were really taking this seriously.

The nurse still came in again at intervals. Once he told her that he needed to go to the toilet, so she left, returning with a burly orderly and a universal restraint key attached to a bright, bulky keychain. The orderly wasn't very good at hiding his surprise that the guy he was meant to be guarding was a rail-thin cripple with a wheeze. House urinated, washed, was escorted back to bed. The Nurse still checked. He fell asleep sometime in the middle of a special on plastic-surgery disasters.

He had an alright night's sleep considering that he had already slept in the afternoon and the fact that he was restrained. _Now there's a word for you_. Restrained.

_...Greg must learn to show more restraint in concern with his conduct in class..._

_200 lines: I must learn to show restraint. I must learn to show restraint. I I I... Must must must..._

Cuddy had recognised that he might have a particular way of sleeping (no doubt she knew very well that he had trouble sleeping, she probably considered it her business to know), and he wasn't that uncomfortable. He turned onto his left side, cramped, turned heavily onto his back. He woke around four with more pain in his leg. Well, it wasn't like he hadn't expected it. He waited in the lonely morning-time, unable to do anything, listening to Asthma Guy and Lip Piercing Kid sleeping and snuffling. He was used to that. When the hospital began to buzz and whirr again he listened, and dozed off in fits and starts. He was going home today.

Wilson came into the little cubicle after breakfast, looking fresh. He wouldn't have the key, and it didn't look like he was concealing bolt cutters or an electric jigsaw on his person either. House sighed. As for a lockpick? Mrs Wilson's boy?

How easy was it to pick handcuffs, anyway?

Now that House knew the end was in sight he was impatient with sitting around. That was him. Always burning out in the last hundred yards. Killing himself on the bell lap.

The nurse came and unlocked him. He dressed. He sat on the bed and passed muster for Curtis, which was a good thing. He didn't feel like arguing. They wanted another X-ray, though, so he walked down with Wilson carrying his bag, on the way to Out. That felt good.

He hobbled out of the room, paying no more than a glance towards his roommates and the nurses. (He reminded himself that he'd be watched by hawk's eyes whenever he came down here again).

He leaned against the wall in the lift. His shirt fit him like a wet tent, so he assumed that he'd lost weight. Nothing a little fried chicken couldn't fix.

The lift was silent. They were talking to each other again, but the silence fell.

* * *

For just a moment the lift was silent. Wilson played with the strap of House's bag sitting against his shoulder. 

House said, "You talked to Stacy."

Wilson felt the surprise appear on his face, then heat spreading as he blushed. Well, he felt about half an inch tall, didn't he?

There was a stagnant pause.

"Yes".

House was staring at him now, his face blank, his shocking eyes, searching.

Wilson tried not to look too sheepish. One hand crept up to the back of his neck, thumb playing along the back of his ear, then it was over and House turned his head, his eyes flicking away again.

House played his fingers against the wall, put his head back.

"How is she?"

"Good".

"Good".

That was all they said about it.

Wilson waited outside the X-ray while House held his breath, turned please, held his breath again, leaned against the wall.

While they were sitting outside on the little moulded plastic chairs, the constantly squeaking ones that force you to sit with your elbows on the next person's lap, waiting for House's number to be called, Wilson asked House how the leg was going. He said yeah, good.

Well, that was good to know. Wilson felt completely reassured.

Wilson had the seat in his car slightly forward when House got in. House did the awkward getting-into-the car thing, and when he got into position enough to realise that he was going to be sitting with his knees touching the glove box, he bent over awkwardly (with his head practically around his knees), and moved the seat forward, grunting as he reached for the lever.

Wilson got in, started up the car, reversed, shifted, accelerated, drove. House was silent, and Wilson could hear the metal bottle-opener on his keys bumping slightly against the steering column. He could also hear the gears turning in House's head. Only he could turn Smugly Contemplating into an art.

Whatever he had to say, he took his time. By the time they were almost out of the car park, he was positively bursting with his own brilliance. Wilson thought about prompting him (that was obviously what he wanted), but he wasn't sure if he wanted to take part in this conversation. Whatever it was, it would be cutting, that was for sure.

Wilson leaned out the window to pass his card over the scanner, and as he turned back into the car, House tapped his fingers once on his knees and said: "Has she got big knockers?"

Wilson stammered something, Who? His ears were hot. Red, he assumed. Oh God, he was right, he didn't want to have this conversation. Now this was embarrassing, like realising that you've left a prophylactic in your pocket as it's too late, or being forced to watch as someone leafs through your high school yearbook.

"Umm, you know, whatever her name is. She's short… and she wears…What is that? Chanel? It's nice, whatever it is. Not sneezy."

Oh. Right. Julie. Yes. She had ridden in his car. The seat was right forward and she hadn't moved it back. House was right, she was short. And, she had rather nice breasts.

Which all would have been OK, except for the fact that he was riding with the Nosy Wonder.

Wilson groaned inwardly and drove, now silently seething as he saw House smirk smugly in the corner of his eye.

There was traffic. House turned the radio on, played air drums halfway through a song, his mouth open, his tongue out to one corner of his mouth, one foot tapping. Music face. A guitar solo came and he played that to. (He seemed to know the name of the song, but it escaped Wilson. It sounded like the Who, but it wasn't). The song ended and a radio commercial came on, one of those sickening jingles for a tyre company, and Wilson turned it down as House looked to him for approval, eyebrows raised. They passed the drive-through at Mcdonalds, but House didn't look interested. He lay his head back slightly, resting against the top of the seat belt, and looked out the window.

Wilson remembered, once. His brother had gotten in trouble at a party or something, big trouble, and had rung brother Jimmy who could always work everything out, late at night, telling him to pick him up at a truck stop on the highway halfway to New York. Don't tell Mom and Dad, alright, buddy, I'm countin' on ya, and his breath had sounded ragged even through the phone line as the heavy traffic rushed by on the other end. Wilson had got out of bed early in the morning and found his brother, who had promised to be home by ten, blah blah blah, shivering on a bench outside a Mcdonalds. He had no shoes and his feet were dirty, his clothes torn, his careful nonchalance not masking the fear and shock on his face, because he was so young, he was always young. James hadn't even asked anything, just pulled up and told him to get in. His brother hadn't said anything, apart from 'I lost my wallet'. He smelled like vomit and beer. Something had gone wrong. God knows whatever he was doing, but it wasn't right. His eyes never stayed on anything. He still shivered in the warmth of the car, and he had stared out the window like that the whole way home, in between asking Jimmy to pull over and throwing up. He still had the courtesy not to throw up in his brother's crap-trap car. That wasn't the first time Jimmy had seen him drunk, but it was the first time he saw that sliding-away look to his eyes, smelt that fearful sweat, seen that confusion.

The last time Jimmy had seen his brother, he'd been meeting him on and off at a street corner that he said was safe. He'd give him money, Leukoplast tape and band-aids, ask him to come home. The last time, his brother had said, Goodbye, Jimmy, and run off, his jeans damp around the bottom. Not I'll see you in a couple of weeks I've got this job lined up or I'll see you later. Goodbye. When he hadn't called for two weeks, three, Jimmy tried to think that it was just taking longer this time, that he was busy, that he had finally gotten off the street and found a caretaking job at a trailer park somewhere, but he knew deep down that his brother had actually dropped off the radar.

He cruised around aimlessly in the car hoping to see him, see someone he hung out with. He still scanned shelters and called the appropriate authorities and even called up hospitals asking for John Does with his description. He drove and walked and dialled until he convinced himself that he would forget his brother's name unless he did this one more thing.

Then he was gone. James Wilson had lost his brother. Hadn't found him yet.

From what he had seen House had an almost similar relationship with his parents than that his brother had. He'd always enjoyed the company of House's mother, she was pleasant and friendly and made wonderful Spinach and Fetta pie. She obviously loved House, loved her boy, and House had always seemed gentlest around her, truth be told.

He found House's father to be too loud and overbearing, laughing too loud at his own jokes, too rough, squeezing tighter than he needed to when he shook your hand. He had heard House refer to him as a prick, and he thought that too, really, but he'd never say it, because it's always wise to stay on the sidelines when it comes to your friends and their parents.

He'd got along well enough the times he'd met with House's parents, not always with Greg himself present. He'd seen them a bit when Greg was sick. He'd had conversations with House's mother that he could never had with House himself. Now, he knew things that House would never tell him himself, but which he would gradually acknowledge as being part of what they both knew. It was tricky, and talking with House was like trying to do your own dentistry work at the best of times, but he still remembered how he'd been so glad when House's mother turned up unannounced outside the hospital room at two-thirty one morning with a change of clothes for Wilson and a casserole in a Tupperware container, how he had thought he could love this woman even though he'd hardly talked to her. She was the archetypal Friend's Kindly Mother.

He'd only been to their house once, driving up with Greg about a year ago to attend a cushy seminar, the last one that he'd presented at.

Wilson had seen the presentation offers that they sent him. He'd also seen how surprised House had been at the reaction to his injury, how he'd winced a bit, just so Wilson could see it flash across his face, as his back turned to the hall and a whisper passed down the stacked rows of plastic chairs. He'd expected it, but not that much. He tried to tell Wilson after, that he thought they'd at least try to act like they didn't care, before laughing at himself, saying that he was a fool, why did he care? It had knocked him around, that lecture. He'd turned to Wilson as they drove away and said: Why, in God's name, do they want me to lecture? Shit, it must be them that are fucked up, right?

For House, that presentation (what was it? Something to do with Legionnaire's disease?) had asked a lot more questions than it had answered. Pandora's lecture.

On the way home, the long drive, they'd dropped in at his parents place, a place they'd bought after he moved out. Wilson was tired from driving all day, and House was just plain tired.

He'd done the usual chuckling at House's childhood, laughing most at the scowl on Greg's face, he smiled and nodded: This is Greg on his first day of school (A skinny child with incredibly blond hair and the boniest knees you've ever seen, squinting at the camera), this is Greg doing this, this is Greg doing that.

Mrs House was obviously extremely proud of him. Scholarship offers. Letters of recomendation. Inexpertly taken photos. All the while as Mrs House talked Greg up and regaled them with embarrassing stories of his childhood, House had stood there with a cynical grin on his face, joking around, saying things like Oh Mom, what's with the new colour scheme, equal opportunities painter?

So it had almost seemed like Greg was happy, even chuckling and playing around with his mother, stealing chopped carrots from the chopping board as she shooed him out of the kitchen, lying back on the lounge and leafing idly through old issues of National Geographic.

Dinner was, for the most part, silent. Greg had dropped out of the conversation about the time that his father had made a comment about music, something like that, something offensive and embarrassing, even to Wilson. He didn't remember, but he did remember how Greg had cleared his throat and squeaked his knife against his plate.

He'd spent the most of the night tinkering with some stupid electrical appliance that was broken, a steak knife in his hand, brow furrowed, talking mostly in monosyllables and grunts.

That visit had been awkward to say the least: to see House in his parent's house with his parents only made you wonder more. What had he been like as a child? Was he born like that, smartarsed and cynical? What, did aliens steal him away at the age of twelve, instill in him a deep-seated misanthropic urge and dump him back down naked in a field of corn?

He sometimes thought that the thing that annoyed House most about people was that they could find him interesting. That he couldn't work out what it was.

The first time he'd met House. House looking into his eyes for just a second, one word, something that sounded like a nickname or a callsign. House? The fingers were long and he felt a roughness there, something that suggested more than a life of rubber gloves and indoors. He had felt that hand in his, a strong but not intimidating, very short handshake, and the eyes sliding away from his and towards the floor almost as soon as they had looked him over. House had retreated back to his spot watching everyone from his position leaning on a table as soon as any necessary introductions were over, and Wilson had had to bite his cheek to stop from laughing when he had heard him referred to as Doctor House. So that was Doctor House. He wished he'd worked out that it was Dr Gregory House: Doctor Wonder, sooner, wished that he had been able to say something smart like "Your reputation precedes you.", but he had just blushed and wondered if he cared. House hadn't cared, at first, but Cuddy had. They both knew Cuddy.

A mutual friend. Could you even use that term when House came in to play? He wasn't so sure at the moment.

Cuddy. Huh. Sometimes he wondered about Cuddy.

Wilson drove. He looked across at House, still looking out of the window, his upper body partly turned away so he could lean against the door, put his cheek against the glass.

"House?"

"Mmm?"

"Can I ask you a question? About when you were sick?"

Greg opened his eyes and just flicked them over to Jimmy, raised his eyebrows.

"Do you mean now.. or Before?"

"Before."

He could see the little wheels spinning in House's head, just chockablock wanting to snipe about the athlete's foot he had when he was ten, hardi ha ha, but he held off. That was an odd sign. He just knew that this would be one of those conversations that he would regret wholeheartedly as soon as it started.

"What?"

"Do you remember being put in the coma?"

House tapped one hand three times on the window and turned his head towards Wilson. Oh yeah. He regretted it already, regretted the look on House's face right then and there.

House furrowed his forehead, took a quick breath and opened his mouth almost like he was going to say something, then didn't. His eyes got that thinking look for a moment, and Wilson turned all of his attention back to the road for a second, indicating, turning, his hands still firmly set at two and ten.

He thought that House might not answer, and he was thinking of encouraging him in a semi-distracted way himself (conversations with House were like that sometimes, you got used to how he could trail off and leave you dangling), because he thought that if he didn't want to talk about it he should at least have the decency to say that he didn't want to talk about it. Even a cut-down, or a scathing remark. Anything but the Silence.

But Wilson didn't need to shift or cough or say anything. House made a vacant sort of hmm noise, breathed in then out, quiet, and then said that Yeah, he did.

There was another silence, not long enough that it needed to be broken to keep the conversation going. The amount of time it takes to watch a pitcher do their little good-luck thing, see the ball rush down the pitch, start running. Wilson heard the car tyres humming beneath them.

"What?"

"What - What do you remember?"

"I remember… I was – asleep on my feet the whole time, you know. I was so out of it… I thought, I've got to do something… So I asked Stacy to talk to them- didn't really think she wouldn't. And… Cuddy telling me that it was all done, I'd be out in a minute, I talked to Stacy, she was there, luvvy-duvvy stuff.

It was like being really drunk, you know, or being hit over the head with something, minus the pain."

Now he was just talking, mumbling really.

House reached forward and started fiddling with the cigarette lighter in the centre console of the dashboard, looking out the front windscreen now, vacantly.

"Stacy?"

The traffic lights just ahead of them were orange, so Wilson slowed the car down and stopped just as they turned red. The car was suddenly very silent, but not oppressive. Oppressive was shouting, sighing, body language, not this.

Wilson heard something tick, a car-metal sound. House was still looking out the windscreen, his eyes resolutely focussed on the middle distance.

"She said all that lover stuff. Yeah, I think I did too. Gross."

He paused for a second. Wilson eased his foot onto the accelerator as the lights changed.

"Then she said sorry. I was so out of it, I could hardly hear her, and I said something like, 'that's Ok', something like that, reassuring her. I could hardly see, and I closed my eyes, and I didn't care any more, I just wondered, why is she sorry? That was it."

Wilson opened his mouth, but didn't say anything. When he actually said something inane like OK, and turned his head to look at House, he was looking out the side window again.

Oh, Jimmy. Always got to push it that little bit too far, haven't you? That last sentence was more than House had wanted to say and way more than Jimmy had wanted to hear. Why the Fuck did he say these things? Why did he care so much when House tried to tell himself he cared so little? Why did he have to pull out the 'shit' that House never wanted out of the attic?

They really didn't say anything more about Stacy.

Wilson drove. After three very quiet blocks House leaned over with a sigh-grunt in his throat and turned the radio back on.

He just put his head back and listened.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: I'm sorry this has taken so long... it's finished now. As I've mentioned before, this was originally posted on the House Fans forum over at s3(dot)invisionfree(dot)com(slash)House(underscore)Fans. So yeah, I was just too lazy/busy to space it out and post it here. Sorry. 

Cheers.

AE.

* * *

FIVE. 

_ Kids out driving Saturday afternoon just pass me by_

_ I'm just savouring familiar sights_

- Flame Trees- Cold Chisel.

* * *

When Wilson stopped the car in front of his place House just sat for a moment, before opening the door and ducking out. His shoulders cracked as he stepped out of the car. The traffic noises were loud. His hearing was acute from the silence of the car, and he could hear a radio playing the local classic hits station out of someone's garage, a dull clunk as someone put down a tool, probably a heavy spanner or socket wrench. Tinkering with something. House could see them lying back on an old blanket to keep the cold away from the small of their back, letting the pieces float together in their mind while they wiped their hands on an old rag before reaching in and fiddling... 

Then again, thought House, it could be some harassed office drone trying not to get creases in their pants as they changed a tyre.

Just hanging around tinkering with a car did hold some attraction to him at the moment, if he had a car that was worthy of tinkering with, if he hadn't thrown out or loaned out indefinitely most of his tools, if he would actually be comfortable fixing a car, having a car to fix.

He pushed off the side of the car and told Wilson he'd be fine carrying his own bag, and to emphasise that he stepped around to the trunk and grabbed it himself, putting the short straps over his left shoulder so the bag lay against his ribs. His nose was running in the cold. He sniffed.

Wilson still came around the car with him. He closed the trunk for something to do as House trudged gingerly through the puddle of sludge that had collected at the base of the stairs up to the front door. He didn't have the ice grip on his cane, so he stepped carefully, conscious of the risk of slipping on the stairs. He heard Wilson behind him, trying not to get mud on his shoes, stepping lightly.

Wilson came up the stairs too, not overtaking House, and stood there, leaning nonchalantly against the rail as House rooted around in one of the pockets of his bag, where Wilson had thrown his keys and a lot of other last-minute stuff.

The outer hallway smelled of floor polish, and when he opened the apartment door (it was easy if you twisted a certain way) there was more mail lying on the floor. Just bills. Boring.

He dropped his bag as soon as he came through the entry and bent over to pick up the mail, immediately in front of Wilson as he came through the door. Wilson made a little _hello-I'm-standing-here, don't-fall-over_ noise, but then House was walking through to the kitchen to put down the pile of bills. Electricity, Gas, Cable, Hot Sex. The Usual. He asked Wilson if he wanted a drink, and he declined. Wilson quickly asked if he was fine, House said Yes, He Was, Wilson said Ok, Fine. He might come over later. (Which really meant that he would). House said OK. Wilson nodded and left. House stood in the kitchen, leaning on the bench as Wilson turned and left, hearing the click of the door, the faraway click of his shoes in the hall, the slam of the outer door. Going back to work.

Damn, this kitchen was cold. House could see his breath as he stood there with his hands on the cold bench, so he went to the switch by the door and turned on the heating. The heat was getting a bit old in this building, now, and he heard a dull clunk under the floor somewhere before the warm air started coming through.

House went through to the bathroom to pee, and as he bent over the tap to wash his hands he bent and cupped water to his mouth as well, his forehead pressed against the cool metal. He sluiced water to his face and watched it drip off in the mirror… He was bent almost double over the basin, his face pale, and sickly-looking, offset nicely by the red around his eyes and the huge bags under them. His forehead was wrinkled, his eyebrows raised to his reflection, and his stubble had graduated to a full beard. He'd definitely lost weight – he could see it in his cheekbones and the way his chin and jaw looked sharper.

He felt like he needed a couple of days in front of the TV with a box of pizza on his chest to feel right again, and that a daytime nap was in order.

He put on some Rachmaninov, down low as background noise, then hopefully (and vainly) cruised through the kitchen looking for something to eat. The place was warmer, but the tiles were still very cold.

He had a tin of peaches in the cupboard, as well as a carton of long-life milk. In the fridge there was a jar of olives and a bottle of chocolate topping. There was a carton of cup-a-soup out on the counter, and he wondered where Wilson had found it. It was probably right at the back of the pantry, hidden behind both the peaches and the milk.

He wasn't that hungry, so he just settled for a mug of instant cup-a-soup (Generic Flavour, he called it, but he thought it was meant to be chicken or vegetable or something). He left the kettle to boil as he walked through to the bedroom and surveyed it.

He still felt pretty shitty, but his mind was too active (and his body too restless) to lie still or sleep yet. Still. He could never sleep very well after such a journey in the car, normally, not when he had so much to think about. He could usually only step out of a car into bed if he was drunk or he'd been out late, and it was neither of those things. Not to mention the fact that he'd just had such a D & fucking M conversation with Wilson. So he waited for sleep. It always came eventually, and he didn't think it would be so laggard today. He yawned, a slight itch in his chest, but he didn't cough.

There were the remains of two Wilson-brand triangles of toast, now dry and hard, on a plate next to the bed. (He didn't even remember that). The bed itself was rucked up, and no matter how tired he was he wasn't going to sleep on those sheets, the ones he had sweated and coughed and – hallucinated – in. He discarded the bedspread, quickly stripped the sheets off the bed and the pillowcase off the pillow he'd been using. There was snot on it, which was really, really gross. He had to run a wash through as soon as he could.

He threw the sheets on the floor where he had a bit of a makeshift dirty-clothes pile going, then grabbed the last set of sheets out of the linen cupboard in the hall, one comfortable and worn flanellette topsheet, a cotton fitted one. He made the bed as quickly as possible, not worrying too much about tucking, because he tended to untuck well-made beds anyway, and he was way too tired to make the bed properly, he just didn't want to sleep in the sweaty manky old ones or have to deal with creases and the cold mattress when they came off in the night. He replaced the blanket and the pillow, feeling strangely domestic.

Now he was beginning to feel tired. He walked through to the bathroom and turned the shower on hot, closing the door against the cold draught. He sat down on the edge of the bath and slowly undressed, quickly limped to the shower, shivering. Damn, it was cold. Especially sick as he was he didn't want to have to stand up for too long.

He stepped carefully into the shower, lifting his leg over the ledge of tiles at the edge of the stall and leaning back against the wall in one movement, the tap just digging into his lower back. The feel of the hot water on his back and legs, the warmth of the vapour billowing through the room, the feeling as he closed his eyes and let the water cascade down over his head and face, was such a release, such a rush of relaxation and relief that he wanted to ease down onto the floor of the shower and just sit there until he dissolved. He probably would have if it wasn't incredibly impractical, but as it was he quickly shampooed his hair, then soaped all over as best he could, scrubbing until he didn't smell like sweat and sick and hospital patient. He spaced out and just stood there in the shower until his fingers were white and wrinkled like prunes and his leg protested despite the heat.

He shut off the shower and stood on the bathmat, shivering, feeling the heat rise off his skin, watching steam rise from his hair in the mirror. He could see that he had lost weight, his shoulders and ribs protruding slightly. He didn't flex the muscles in his arms, too tired for that, he just looked.

He gave a sarcastic eyebrow raise to the Gregory John House, MD, in the mirror, curling his lip, looking him up and down. His upper body was ok. So was his left leg, but with nothing like the muscle tone it used to have.

His right leg was wasted, with a pretty nasty scar. Nothing you could whip out and show the boys at summer camp:

_Hey check this out.. where I had my appendix out… Where I fell off my bike… twelve stitches and gravel rash…_

_Hey dude! Check out this mad fucker! A six-inch scar and a playdoh leg from knee to hip!_

That was what the girls saw now, too. Looked straight past his cock to the scar on his leg. 

He limped quickly over to the cupboard and grabbed a towel, drying his hair so it didn't drip down his back, quickly chafing at his back and stomach. He could smell soap, and the clean smell of the towel. Nothing like being sick to make you feel dirty.

He was tired, but now he felt driven, and falling into bed really exhausted would be good, so he coughed a bit from the steam (and the infection) and quickly shaved electrically, rubbing his face afterwards ruefully. He'd missed Monday's shave, partly because he was too sick to get up... now he'd have to shave twice in one week if he wanted to get the routine back. Either that or he could grow a beard, but there was a hugh line between stubbled and bearded that he didn't want to cross.

Now he felt better somehow, clean and respectable, smelling like soap and shampoo. _All I need's the talcum powder_, he thought, _maybe a singlet to tuck into my underwear_, thinking of his mother and her constant assertion that all minor illnesses could be warded off by not going outside with your hair wet and drinking hot liquids.

He remembered his stomach, grabbed his cane and walked through to the kitchen. He made instant soup and sipped a little of it as he ran the tap hot for the hot water bottle, and some more as he walked to the bedroom with the mug in one hand and the hot water bottle wrapped in an old towel tucked under his right arm, but most of it lay cooling on the bedside table as he fell asleep with a paperback beside his head, a pleasant warmth against his leg.

House slept well (for him), and woke up with his head turned away from the afternoon light coming in the doorway. He hadn't closed the door or the blinds in the hall, and there was a bar of light across the bed, cutting across one spread-out forearm as he stretched. He could smell the rubber from the now-cold hot water bottle.

He was out of bed and dressed by the time the afternoon Sesame Street rerun started. The letter of the day was X (xylophone was still the old standby, he guessed not many kids knew what a xanthoma was). The number of the day was 17, sewenteen by the count, ha ha, and that was the Feller number. The atomic number of Chlorine. The number of syllables in a Haiku, how old the Dancing Queen was, he believed, and just after the ides of March. He was really grasping at straws now. Who was that Russian Novelist who had seen seventeen trees outside of his jail cell?

He was reading on the couch contentedly when Wilson came over, bearing pizza and a six-pack of Molson Canadian Light, some basic shopping as well so he didn't have to go out if he didn't want to. He asked if pizza was OK, and House said sure. He wasn't picky. He asked Wilson if he'd got Ham and Pineapple, the usual joke. He hated pineapple on pizza anyway. Wilson gave him a rebuking look accordingly, and then they sat and ate.

House was surprisingly hungry, and even Wilson looked surprised at the amount he put away.

* * *

They sat and ate pizza and drank beer, House scoffing down pizza like there was no tomorrow. It was almost funny. 

House had his feet up on the couch, so Wilson took the easy chair.

They talked about music, and Madonna's lingerie fashion, and running shoes. House explained to Wilson that a guitar had more octaves than a piano. He then explained it again because his mouth was full of pizza the first time. He even hummed a bit through the pizza and mimed keys, but that didn't help.

They were both slouched back, nursing full bellies. (House was still on the last quarter of his bottle of beer, sipping in between idly playing with the condensation rings it left on the cover of the TV guide sitting on the coffee table. Wilson was on his second.)

It was the commercial, the new flavour of Coke they had out, and House said

"Did you ever do that cannonballing thing when you were a kid?"

Wow. A personal question and a conversation initiated.

Wilson raised his eyebrows and took a gulp of his beer.

"You know, you run up to something, like the edge of a pool, or a jetty, and then you jump off and tuck you legs to your chest, and keep 'em tucked..."

Wilson thought of the DO NOT RUN signs and the shivering kids among the chemical smell at the local pool.

House balled one fist and crashed it into the other laid flat, making a sort of splashing motion.

"… And then you hit the water, and it makes a huge splash, and your swimmers get pushed right up the crack of your ass, if you're not wearing shorts."

He grinned. Wilson wondered how he could find that so amusing.

"Yeah, I did it, at the pool, but only once or twice when the lifeguards weren't looking. And maybe in the Swim Team."

"When my dad was stationed in Hawaii we used to do it at the jetty near the beach… we'd run along these boards, trying not to get splinters in out feet, and then we'd take a huge leap of the end and see who could make the biggest splash. It was fun."

Wilson wondered where that had come from. Half the time when you talked with House you never knew where these (seemingly) random outbursts came from.

Wilson finished his beer, House was almost done on his too.

They talked a bit more, about swimming and sport, and shoes and the Appalachian Trail, and then the English murder mystery came back on and Wilson had to watch closely, because House had bet him that the murderer was the beady-eyed guy who polished the candle-sticks in the Church. Wilson thought it was the wife of the Vicar. House was right, and after assuring that he hadn't read the book or seen the program before Wilson grudgingly parted with his twenty bucks, reminding House that it was he who had bought dinner, and reminding himself that he still needed to cook up an ingenious way of paying House back for going walkabout in the hospital. Trying to get House back was playing a dangerous game.

The late-night news came on. House yawned and sniffed. He was still a little bit wheezy.

Wilson got up and took the pizza to the fridge, stowing the remaining three bottles of beer in there as well.

He heard House rise, sucking the last out of his bottle of beer as he walked. He came into the kitchen and threw the bottle in the right waste receptacle, started poking his nose around the groceries Wilson had bought. Bread, milk, the stuff that House would need for the morning and in case he wasn't well enough to actually go shopping in the next couple of days. Mind you, most of the shopping that House did was the corner-store essentials kind anyway (or the take-out food kind).

As far as Wilson could tell, he was fairly domestic, but still ate like a first-grader. Even when he had lived with Stacy he'd had to be prompted to live on something other than peanut butter sandwiches and tinned spaghetti. Stacy had liked to come home and cook something romantic and complex. House still liked to come home and eat a jam foldover and get crumbs everywhere.

One of the last big fights they'd had before the infarction -before they realized they hadn't really had all that much to fight about at all- had started, as far as Wilson could tell, when House had been working on an article. He'd worked all evening at their desk, getting crumbs all over Stacy's case files, and the clincher, a large blob of Snak Pak brand fake vanilla custard over the surface of the desk.

Wilson could still remember laughing helplessly at the front door as Greg turned up with an overnight bag, Debbie looking on disapprovingly as he made a 'blah blah' gesture with his hand, and said in an amazingly accurate high-pitched Stacy voice "Use a goddamn plate, Greg, a plate!"

House cracked open the carton of milk and washed down a Vicodin with a gulp straight from the carton. He thanked Wilson for the food 'n' stuff and turned back to the couch.

Wilson said he might go, House said, Good, Ok, thanks. The channels flicked and the page of his book turned.

The last thing Wilson said before he stepped out the door was Don't go smoking any cigars, Ok? From that angle Wilson could just see the side of his face, still with the blue flash of the changing channels on it.

House turned his head and said said of course not, it'd stink the place up, he needed to air it out as it was, and did he look like head of the board?

Wilson smiled, closed the door, went home.

The date with Julie went well, and after House returned to work after milking his week's sick leave for all it was worth, House had hammered him for every single detail. He said he couldn't wait to meet her. Wilson said Oh Yes he could.

House did wait to meet Julie, but not for long, and she was well prepared.

_  
Julie, oddly, did have a liking for House. The first time she met him (Wilson was slightly nervous at this, the true test of their relationship) she was just quiet for a few moments after he left. She asked, Was he always like that? Wilson said What, the limp, or the sarcastic, bitter part?_

_Julie couldn't believe that he was an asshole even before the infarction. And, unbelievably, she liked him. House liked her cooking (he was probably the only person who did) and laughed at her jokes._

_The only thing about House that Julie ever publicly disapproved of was the pills. She'd get James to invite him over to dinner, and make sure he came, and ignore or laugh at his crude jokes, and then she'd only half-fill his wine glass. House knew, too, that she either thought he was a drug addict or thought that he didn't know how to handle his own medication, and so he accordingly gave Wilson his 'I know I'm being patronised' look over his scanty glass of red._

_Yet House seemed to enjoy being around Julie, as much as he could seem to enjoy being around anyone for a long time. Wilson thought he might find the two of them funny, the way he seemed to have a sarcastic smile on his face when he came over to their place, the way he quietly wolfed down their food._

_He was strange._

He was strange. That's what Wilson thought as he indicated and turned the car back onto the road outside House's apartment. He was a strange guy.

* * *

House languished at home. He watched TV, and read, and played piano, and by the time he bored of the stuff he did indoors and felt like going out he was well enough to do so without coughing his guts out in the gutter. He still stayed off work, though, because he was enjoying the break, and he wasn't that bored, and Wilson had (probably on purpose) not informed him of any interesting cases. 

He went down to the music store he liked, and browsed in the bookshop. He beat his own high score at Addams Family Pinball. He even walked to the corner store to buy more peanut butter, albeit carefully.

On his first day back he slept in past the alarm, which he didn't set, and got up and ready in time to catch the really late bus, the last one that stopped anywhere near where he could get to the hospital for a couple of hours. He stood in the cold with a stamping kid in a WalMart uniform, someone wearing a pair of white orderly sneakers who gave him a sidelong glance. A college student wearing an oversized jumper and a kid's backpack looked at his face, his cane, his face, and gave him her seat. He looked her in the eyes and nodded to say thanks, and she blushed. He stared out the window among the old-lino and diesel smell of the bus and only coughed once.

The whole first day he did nothing but avoid Cuddy, play Gameboy and surf the internet, sending embarrassing links to Wilson, and around mid-afternoon he fell asleep, just hearing the pop, whirr, click as the record player reached the end of the record and the arm whizzed back.

He dozed in the brown chair in the corner of his office, but really he was just thinking with his eyes closed.

.- .


End file.
